Violence, Excess, and the Composite Emotional Rhetoric of Richard Coeur de Lion

Abstract

This article offers a reappraisal of the Middle English romance Richard Coeur de Lion in light of its composite nature, which, I suggest, provides grounds for a more critical reading of the eponymous hero’s bellicose temperament and violent actions than has hitherto been offered by scholarship. I argue that the later interpolations made to the romance produce a shift in narrative tone, most clearly manifested in the emotions of the portrayed characters, pointing toward an ambivalent evaluation of Richard’s violent behavior. I in turn link this evaluation to late fourteenth-century reactions against the corruption of chivalric ideals.