The Testament of Cresseid and Seven Fables

The greatest of the late medieval Scottish makers, 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 honors 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.

ISBN 0571249280   DEWEY edition DC22 ISBN13 9780571249282 (What's this?)   Pages 208 Publisher Faber and Faber   Weight (grammes) 323 Imprint Faber and Faber   Published in London Format Hardback   Height (mm) 204 Publication date 04 Jun 2009   Width (mm) 140 Translator Seamus Heaney   Spine width (mm) 20 DEWEY 821.2   Academic level General

		The Testament of Cresseid		1
		Seven Fables		49
		The Prologue		51
		The Cock and the Jasper		57
		The Two Mice		65
		The Lion and the Mouse		83
		The Preaching of the Swallow		105
		The Fox, the Wolf and the Carter		129
		The Fox, the Wolf and the Farmer		151
		The Toad and the Mouse		169

 Be the first to write a customer review