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Anger was an ambivalent emotion in the Middle Ages, oscillating between acceptance and condemnation in theological discourse. Initially defined as detrimental during the Carolingian era unless it was internally directed against one’s own sins, anger came to be rehabilitated in a context of Crusade, where zealous leaders were required to defend ecclesiastical interests on the battlefield. However, certain very specific conventions regulated its verbalization, thus permitting authors to either magnify or denounce the protagonists they portrayed according to how they framed the emotion. This paper offers a reading of The Siege of Milan and The King of Tars , two Middle English crusading romances, in light of these codes. A close look at the way anger is represented throughout the texts enables us to acquire a subtle and enriched understanding of two prominent issues inherent to the texts’ ideologies: the promotion of Christian devotion to the religious and military standards intrinsic to the Crusades in The Siege of Milan , and the importance of Christian expansion and incorporation in The King of Tars.

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. Bien sai que molt a El rei proesce e hardement; Mais il s'embat si folement! Quel haut prince que jo ja fusse, Je voldroie mielz que jo eusse Largesce e sens o tot mesure Que hardement o desmesure.1 [I know well that the king is endowed with great prowess and boldness, but he rushes into things with such rashness! However great prince I be I 1 Ambroise, L'estoire de la guerre sainte, ed. Gaston Paris (Paris, 1887), lines 12146-52; the English translation is mine. STUDIES IN PHILOLOGY Volume 114 Winter 2017 Number 1 2 Violence and Excess in Richard Coeur de Lion would rather exercise generosity and judgement in appropriate measure, than boldness carried to excess.] Saladin on Richard I in Ambroise, L'estoire de la guerre sainte (c. 1194-1199) of Blood? Interpreting Medieval Violence, ed.

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