The Testament of Cresseid and Seven Fables

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. Henrysons 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 Chaucers Troilus and Criseyde, offering a tragic account of its faithless heroines 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 poems 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.

Robert Henryson lived in Dunfermline, Scotland, sometime between 1400 and 1500. Counted among the Scots makars, he composed his highly inventive verse in Middle Scots. His surviving corpus amounts to fewer than five thousand lines.

Seamus Heaney was born in Northern Ireland. Death of a Naturalist, his first collection, appeared in 1966, and since then he has published poetry, criticism, and translations that have established him as one of the leading poets of his generation. In 1995 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. District and Circle, his eleventh collection of poems, was awarded the T. S. Eliot Prize.

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. Henrysons 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 Chaucers Troilus and Criseyde, offering a tragic account of its faithless heroines 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 poems 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.

“The Testament of Cresseid is a beautiful, rare work, unique in the history of literature for [the ‘recognition] scene alone. Heaney has done us all a generous and graceful service.”—Ruth Padel, Financial Times

“The wintry force and appeal of [The Testament] are certainly apparent in [Heaneys] rendering . . . Read him and youll want to experience the original, too.”—Sean OBrien, The Sunday Times (London)

“The Testament of Cresseid is [Henrysons] masterpiece, possibly the greatest short narrative poem of the Middle Ages. It mingles human sympathy, moral judgment, ironic awareness and grim humour in equal measure . . . [Heaneys] translation of The Testament into modern English . . . is a reminder that translation is one of the glories of the English literary tradition.”—Jonathan Bate, The Sunday Telegraph

“Virtuoso moments are common in the book, with Heaney not only giving a justmodern account of Henryson, but offering something distinctive and memorable on its own account.”—Peter McDonald, The Guardian

“[Heaneys translation of] The Testament of Cresseid and Seven Fables is typically both masterful and accessible.”—Carol Ann Duffy, The Daily Telegraph

“Nobel laureate Heaney's new versions of very old narrative poems are unlikely to make the same worldwide splash as his Beowulf, but they remain moving and memorable. Misfortune and fortune, repentance and retribution, pity and prudence, and a late-medieval Christian outlook, in which this life prepares us for the next, all pervade the stories told and retold by Henryson (d. 1505), the best poet of the much-maligned generation that followed Geoffrey Chaucer. Henryson's The Testament of Cresseid, set in the Trojan War, describes the last days of the title character's life. Having abandoned the lovelorn warrior Troilus for his heroic rival Diomede, Cresseid finds that Diomede has cast her aside in turn: she curses the god of love, who retaliates by giving her leprosy. She ends her days as a dignified, repentant beggar, almost unrecognized by the man she once loved: 'Still, they assumed from grief so mildly borne/ And yet so cruel, she was of noble kind.' Henryson also translated (or made up) animal stories attributed to Aesop. Heaney's facing-page translations, composed (like Henryson's) in seven- to nine-line rhymed stanzas, give a fluent, often delightful modern cast to all of these pathos-filled tales.”—Publishers Weekly