The Testament Of Cresseid

Originally published in 1926, this volume contains the full text of The Testament of Cresseid by Scottish poet Robert Henryson.

The greatest of the late medieval Scottish makars, Robert Henryson wrote in Lowland Scots, a distinctive northern version of English. He was profoundly influenced by Chaucer's vision of the frailty and pathos of human life. His greatest poem, and one of the rhetorical masterpieces of the literature of these islands, is the narrative Testament of Cresseid, set in the aftermath of the Trojan War, which completes the story of Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde, offering a grim and tragic account of its faithless heroine's rejection by her lover Diomede, and her decline into prostitution and leprosy. A work of unreconciled Shakespearean intensity, the Testament has been translated by Seamus Heaney into a confident and yet faithful modern English idiom which honours the poem's unique blend of detachment and compassion. A master of narrative, Henryson was also a comic master of the verse fable; his burlesques of human weakness in the guise of animal wisdom are traced with delicate comedy and irony. Seven of the Fables are here sparklingly translated; their burlesque freshness rendered to the last claw and feather. Seven Fables and The Testament of Cresseid is an extraordinarily rich and wide-ranging encounter between two poets across six centuries.

Originally published in 1974. The thirty-six essays of this book were written and assembled in hour of an internationally recognised scholar of medieval literature. Written by a diverse range of contributors, the chapters cover not only various studies of aspects of Chaucer’s poetry, but also some other medieval authors and investigations about the period, particularly referencing carols and hymns.

"Situational Poetics is a deep, cultural history of Henryson's problematic Testament of Cresseid. This book offers wonderful insights throughout, from its analysis of the hybrid "dislocations and double consciousness" of late medieval Scottish literature, Henryson's "Virgilian" career, his admixture of tragedy and satire in the Testament, and the anamorphic temporalities that link Chaucer, Henryson and Shakespeare in their telling and re-telling of the Troilus and Criseyde story. This is an utterly compelling study of Henryson's Testament, one that promises to re-shape completely our understanding of the poem." --Stephanie Trigg, Professor of English, University of Melbourne "A remarkably ambitious attempt to re-situate Henryson's Testament of Cresseid within literary history and to recover the author's deliberately constructed career-profile from the many accidents of transmission. ... the first ever view of Henryson "in the round." --Tom Shippey, Professor Emeritus, St. Louis University "Nickolas Haydock's new book on the great Scot poet Robert Henryson manages to do several things at once that seemed to the rest of us to be incompatible. He firmly places Henryson's work in literary history, but renders him accessible and even in dialogue with new ways of thinking about literature and culture. He is respectful of Henryson's canonical place in Scottish identity but raises questions about how literature works in making national and ethnic identities. Haydock gives us a Henryson for the twenty-first century." --John M. Ganim, Professor of English, University of California, Riverside

The essays gathered in this volume, organized around the theme of medieval literature, display a great range of subjects and of critical approaches. One third of the pieces deal with Chaucer: his use of mythology, his characters, narrative techniques, his treatment of courtly love. Other contributions focus on medieval proverbs and ballads, medieval use of classical authors, John Gower, Lydgate, Icelandic saga, the Middle Scots poets, problems of teaching medieval drama in twentieth-century classrooms, French influences on Middle English literature, and the tale of Robin Hood.

Seamus Heaney's engagement with medieval literature constitutes a significant body of work by a major poet including a landmark translation of "Beowulf". This title examines both Heaney's direct translations and his adaptation of medieval material in his original poems.

Website containing excerpt from the poem, the testament of cresseid / by Robert Henryson.