Heroes and Anti-Heroes in Medieval Romance

Medieval romances so insistently celebrate the triumphs of heroes and the discomfiture of villains that they discourage recognition of just how morally ambiguous antisocial or even downright sinister their protagonists can be and correspondingly of just how admirable or impressive their defeated opponents often are. This tension between the heroic and the antiheroic makes a major contribution to the dramatic complexity of medieval romance but it is not an aspect of the genre that has been frequently discussed up. Focusing on fourteen distinct characters and character-types in medieval narrative this book illustrates the range of different ways in which the imaginative power and appeal of romance-texts often depends on contradictions implicit in the very ideal of heroism.