POST-TRUTHING THE EMOTIONS IN MEDIEVAL CRISIS: THE KING OF TARS

In discussions of the medieval crisis, emotions play a vital role and shape opinions through emotional appeals rather than a balanced understanding of the conflict, demonstrating post-truth. The King of Tars is an example of how post-truth narratives might be effectively inserted into medieval narratives to influence the audience's perceptions of religious and cultural people. Through emotive spectacle, symbolic misrepresentations of Islamic ideas and customs, and visceral imagery, the poem creates a simplistic, divisive picture of Christianity's innate superiority over the Islamic world. Its preoccupation with physical changes and the mixing of racial and religious identities captures the fears of the time about distinctions, borders, and miscegenation. The work chooses sensationalistic fiction to incite fear and validate prejudices above nuanced engagement with intricate theological and cultural divides. The King of Tars exposes the historical foundations of contemporary post-truth narratives that trade in spectacle and false information to create divisive identities and cultural animosities. This paper explores how a Middle English romance, The King of Tars, prioritizes emotional impact over historical accuracy and contributes to a discourse shaped by Crusade-era anxieties and emotional manipulations.