“Be war in tyme, approchis neir the end”: The sense of an ending in "The Testament of Cresseid"
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Date
2016
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Adam Mickiewicz University
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Abstract
The story of Troilus and Criseyde – whether in Chaucer’s or Henryson’s renditions – is not a story
about a new beginning, but a story about an end: the end of love, of hope, and finally – the end of
life: Troilus’s life in Chaucer’s poem and Cresseid’s life in Henryson’s. The Scottish version of the
story, however, not only evokes the end of an individual life, but also the end of the world. The
purpose of this paper is to situate Henryson’s poem in the context of apocalyptic fiction – fiction
which is concerned with loss, decay and the finality of things. My contention that the poem belongs
to the apocalyptic genre is based on a number of its features, such as the elegiac mood and imagery,
the contrast between the past and the present, as well as the pattern of sin-redemption-preparation for
death, which applies to Cresseid’s life, but also invites reflection on our own.
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Keywords
apocalypse, dying in the Middle Ages, Robert Henryson, Testament of Cresseid, Troilus and Criseyde, Saturn, poetic closure
Citation
Studia Anglica Posnaniensia, vol. 51.2(2016), pp. 93-106