More's Narrative Puzzle of King Edward IV in Historia Richardi Tertii

Abstract: Thomas More's narrative techniques in the Historia Richardi Tertii — the Latin version of his history of Richard III — are highly innovative. Like Sallust and Tacitus, whom he took as models, Thomas More has a rhetorical and moral purpose in mind when he writes the Historia . But instead of directly instructing the reader in virtue, More constructs his history in such a way that readers can experience, on a smaller scale, the confusing political situation that existed during Richard's rise to power. He does this by destabilizing the narrator and filling the work with a multiplicity of voices and points of view, many of them untrustworthy. This essay begins with a survey of how More undermines the authority of the narrator in his history before analysing how he turns the character of King Edward into a puzzle, by presenting him both as an ideal king and as an unbearable tyrant. The essay concludes by exploring how More uses the puzzle of Edward's character to teach readers to discern character by observing the discrepancies between words and actions.