ABSTRACT
Scholarship on medieval chivalry has recently undergone a tremendous revival and a considerable amount of revision. As many recent scholars have noted, the major problem with previous views of chivalry is that they oversimplified its role in medieval society by positing the existence of a unitary knightly class composed of nobles of a stable ancestry. The other benefit of incorporating analysis of the rhetoric of anger into the chivalry debate is that it serves as a way for the modern scholar to access the system of honour and shame, especially in episodes where medieval authors were not completely explicit. The behaviours outlined by scholars of chivalry, such as Strickland and Gillingham, were concerns about the proper experience and expression of emotions. Emotions glossed as anger frequently encode judgments about violations of person and moral order. Medieval rhetoric on emotions and the representations of them in texts operated within particular historical and cultural boundaries.
