Feminae: Medieval Women and Gender Index


  • Record Number: 9063
  • Author(s)/Creator(s): Parkinson , David J.
  • Contributor(s):
  • Title: Henryson’s Scottish Tragedy [Henryson explores the quintessentially Scottish themes of disfigurement, loss, and exile through the spurned female protagonist of his fifteenth-century Middle Scots poem, “The Testament of Cresseid.” Henryson also uses the poem as an occasion to explore the moral objectives of poetry itself. Title note supplied by Feminae.].
  • Source: Chaucer Review 25, 4 ( 1991): Pages 355 - 362.
  • Description:
  • Article Type: Journal Article
  • Subject (See Also): Criseyde (Literary Figure) Henryson, Robert, Poet- Testament of Cresseid Literature- Verse Middle Scots Poetry Scotland Women in Literature
  • Award Note:
  • Geographic Area: British Isles
  • Century: 15
  • Primary Evidence:
  • Illustrations:
  • Table:
  • Abstract: In the Testament of Cresseid readers perceive the fascination of Middle Scots poets with solitary, often disfigured, wanderers, as Criseyde is here depicted to be. In the Testament, Henryson addresses a fundamental concern of Middle Scots poetry: the tension between the substantial topics of loss, winter, and old age and the lighter, passing topics of youth, beauty, and spring. Given this dichotomy, Henryson questions the moral validity of poetry. [Reproduced by permission of Peter G. Beidler and Martha A Kalnin Diede, editors of "The Chaucer Review: An Indexed Bibliography."].
  • Related Resources:
  • Author's Affiliation: University of Saskatchewan
  • Conference Info: - , -
  • Year of Publication: 1991.
  • Language: English
  • ISSN/ISBN: 00092002