Background
Henryson was born in c. 1425 probably in Scotland.
( The greatest of the late medieval Scots makars, Robert ...)
The greatest of the late medieval Scots makars, Robert Henryson was influenced by their vision of the frailty and pathos of human life, and by the inherited poetic example of Geoffrey Chaucer. Henryson's finest poem, and one of the rhetorical masterpieces of Scots literature, is the narrative Testament of Cresseid. Set in the aftermath of the Trojan War, the Testament completes the story of Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde, offering a tragic account of its faithless heroine's rejection by her lover, Diomede, and of her subsequent decline into prostitution and leprosy. Written in Middle Scots, a distinctive northern version of English, the Testament has been translated by Seamus Heaney into a confident but faithful idiom that matches the original verse form and honors the poem's unique blend of detachment and compassion. A master of high narrative, Henryson was also a comic master of the verse fable, and his burlesques of human weakness in the guise of animal wisdom are delicately pointed with irony. Seven of the Fables are here sparklingly translated by Heaney, their freshness rendered to the last claw and feather. Together, The Testament of Cresseid and Seven Fables provide a rich and wide-ranging encounter between two poets across six centuries.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0374273480/?tag=2022091-20
(Henryson is widely thought to be the best Scottish poet o...)
Henryson is widely thought to be the best Scottish poet of the 15th century, but modern readers are sometimes bothered by the difficulties that the language presents. This edition, a revised and shortened version of Fox's large 1981 edition, allows the non-specialist to read Henryson with accuracy and ease. Fox has revised both the introduction and the annotations, adapting them to the needs of a more general audience, and he has added a useful glossary of obscure words.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0198123248/?tag=2022091-20
Henryson was born in c. 1425 probably in Scotland.
Little is known of his life, but evidence suggests that Henryson was a teacher who had training in law and the humanities, that he had a connection with Dunfermline Abbey and that he may also have been associated for a period with Glasgow University.
Henryson's poetry was composed in Middle Scots at a time when this was the state language. It is one of the most important bodies of work in the canon of early Scottish literature. His writing consists mainly of narrative works highly inventive in their development of story-telling techniques. He generally achieved a canny balance of humour and high seriousness which is often multi-layered in its effects. This is especially so in his Morall Fabillis, in which he expresses a consistent but complex world view that seems standard, on the surface, vis a vis the major ruling power of the church, while containing critical and questioning elements. This range is further extended in his Testament of Cresseid with its more tragic vision. Overall, his themes and tone convey an attractive impression of humanity and compassionate intellect. He was a subtle rhetorician and remains to this day one of the finest in the Scots language. Although his writing usually incorporated a typically medieval didactic purpose, it also has much in common with other artistic currents of northern Europe which were generally developing, such as the realism of Flemish painting, the historical candour of Barbour or the narrative scepticism of Chaucer. An example is his subtle use of psychology to convey individual character in carefully dramatised, recognisable daily-life situations which tend to eschew fantastic elements. His surviving body of work amounts to almost exactly 5000 lines. Henryson's surviving canon consists of three long poems and around twelve miscellaneous short works in various genres. The longest poem is his Morall Fabillis, a tight, intricately structured set of thirteen fable stories in a cycle that runs just short of 3000 lines. Two other long works survive, both a little over 600 lines each. One is his dynamic and inventive version of the Orpheus story and the other, his Testament of Cresseid, is a tale of moral and psychological subtlety in a tragic mode founded upon the literary conceit of "completing" Criseyde's story-arc from Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde. The range of Henryson's shorter works includes a highly original pastourelle on a theme of love, as well as a bawdy passage of comic flyting which targets the medical practises of his day, a highly crafted and compressed poem of Marian devotion, some allegorical works, some philosophical meditations, and a prayer against the pest. As with his longer works, his outward themes often carry important subtexts. Constructing a sure chronology for Henryson's writings is not possible, but his Orpheus story may have been written earlier in his career, during his time in Glasgow, since one of its principal sources was contained in the university library. Internal evidence has been used to suggest that the Morall Fabillis were composed during the 1480s.
(In this new edition of the poems of Robert Henryson, Davi...)
( The greatest of the late medieval Scots makars, Robert ...)
(Henryson is widely thought to be the best Scottish poet o...)
(88p 15p introduction by MacDiarmid, nice unused copy, no ...)