The Testament of Cresseid & Seven Fables Robert Henryson , Seamus Heaney

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, 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.