In their depiction of death and dying medieval English chroniclers from the twelfth to the fifteenth centuries reveal certain similarities and consistencies which allow us to evaluate them as expressive of their times and their contemporaries' modes of perception. This article focuses on certain terms and modes of classification in which medieval chroniclers perceived death as a physical event with enormous moral consequences. The purpose of this article is to show with the method of literary analysis applied to historical texts—in particular one specific account of the death of King Richard the Lionheart—how certain patterns of evaluation can both conceal and reveal collective and individual assessments of death.
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