Resumen de Moved with Rage: the Politics of Emotion in Libro de Alexandre
This article explores the ethics of royal anger in the 13th-century Iberian verse narrative Libro de Alexandre. Kings who were perceived as irascible could and were accused of violating the limits of what William Reddy terms an emotional regime. I argue that the Alexandre poet crafted his eponymous hero as a ruler whose excessive anger restricts his ability to successfully navigate the complexities of 13th-century Iberian geopolitics. Far from a theater of Reconquest, 13th-century Iberia was a complex network of cultural intersection that often valued political convenience over religious ideology. Read in this light, Alexander becomes an illegitimate absolutist in an era of ideological nuance.
