What use to make of a tyrant? Thomas More’s History of Richard III and the Limits of Early Tudor Historiography

Abstract

The literary genre and ideological stance of More’s History of King Richard III have long been subject to critical debate. While it seems obvious that his portrayal of the last Plantagenet as a full-blown tyrant is anything but historically ‘accurate’, the question remains controversial as to whether this intricately ironic text represents a (somewhat half-hearted) attempt at legitimising the ruling Tudor dynasty’s claim to authority, an implicit rejection of the same, or a more general humanist moral exemplum. Placing More’s Richard within the historiographical practice of its time and reading it alongside his own critical reflections on historiographical method in the debate with Germanus Brixius, this article attempts to access the problem of generic purpose from a meta-literary perspective, reading the text as a self-conscious parodic comment on some of the major strands of early Tudor historiography and as an implicit challenge to the humanists’ confidence in language as a valuable basis for the construction of a commonwealth.