Anonymous English Poem of the 14th century The King of Tars: Xenophobia as a Modality of the Plot and Language Motives

Abstract

This article is a pilot study of the content features of the English tale of chivalry King of Tarsus and a description of the main features of its poetics. To this day the epic poem remains in the status of underestimated by English-speaking literary critics and unfamiliar to Russian linguists. One of the purposes of the article is to highlight the most striking features of the plot and language of the text, which could further attract some researchers. Particular attention is paid to the ways of solving the ideological task that the anonymous author faced, those plot and verbal motives that materialized the opposition of the Saracens to the Christians. It involves the creation of images of the Saracens with help of exotic nominations, animalistic speech description and black color symbolization to express their "pagan" faith. The main result of the study is defining the text's focus on inciting xenophobia among English readers. The identification of symmetry as the organizing structural principle of this text is another result of the research.