Engineering the Nation: Richard Coer de Lyon and England's Technocratic King

Abstract: Through a comparative treatment of two versions of the Middle English romance Richard Coer de Lyon and related material in the Anonymous Short English Metrical Chronicle , this essay argues that war technologies play a central symbolic role in characterizing Richard I of England both positively and negatively, one that has historically been overlooked due to the focus on later versions of this romance. I suggest that Richard's terrifying war machinery appropriates the technological mastery frequently associated with the East, consolidating a narrative of English superiority, but that it also invokes divisive economic tensions over milling and land usage, fused with a recent history in which the crown's technological military power was exerted against England internally. The equivocality of technological signification surrounding Richard is a central feature of narrations of his life in these texts, one that underpins an ambivalent relationship to his ability to symbolize English unity.