‘He in alle thing wele temperite was’: The Emotional Language of The Buik of King Alexander The Conquerour.

This article focuses on the treatment of emotional states and the expressive vocabulary used to depict them in the Older Scots romance, The Buik of King Alexander the Conqueror (c. 1450-1499). 1 It demonstrates how the rich language of emotion in this Scottish narrative poem is used for a new and distinctive portrayal of Alexander the Great, and his adversary, Darius of Peria, significantly distinguishing the text from its principal Latin source, the Historia de Preliis Alexandri Magni. This leads in turn to reflections on what the text’s exploitation of the emotional potential of its source reveals about its function and reception in late medieval Scotland in advising those in power and encouraging compassion in its late medieval readers.