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The Wars of the Roses in Thomas More’s “History of Richard III”
https://doi.org/10.28995/2686-7249-2018-10-54-65
Abstract
This article analyzes the picture of the conflict between York and Lancaster dynasties drawn by Thomas More in his “History of Richard III”. The commonplace of modern English-speaking historiography is that Thomas More’s text is not ‘history’ at all (it can be described as moralizing or philosophical drama), and that More was always inaccurate with details.
The author demonstrates that More’s description of the Wars of the Roses is not inaccurate or careless, he putted history upside down. More changed the starting point of the conflict; reduced fifteen battles to four; removed several historical figures etc. The author supposes that Thomas More had no intention to describe real paste. Quite the opposite, he used historical material to depict some ideal country where Parliament had power to replace kings; were women didn’t participate in politics; where a virtue triumphs and a tyrant had no chance to rule peacefully.
About the Author
E. D. BraunRussian Federation
Elena D. Braun - Ph.D. in History, associate professor.
bld. 6, Miusskaya sq., Moscow; bld. 82, Prospect Vernadskogo, Moscow, 119571.
References
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Supplementary files
For citation: Braun E.D. The Wars of the Roses in Thomas More’s “History of Richard III”. RSUH/RGGU Bulletin: “Literary Teory. Linguistics. Cultural Studies”, Series. 2018;(10):54-65. https://doi.org/10.28995/2686-7249-2018-10-54-65
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