The recommended text is:
Fox, Denton (ed.) The Poems of Robert Henryson. (Oxford: Clarendon, 1987) [ISBN 0198123248].
Note that, for this chapter, you will be expected to have read the whole work – that is, the Prologue and all 13 tales. You may find you want to study some in more depth than others, however.
See the general reading list at the beginning of this subject guide for suggestions. On the subject of allegory, the following are recommended reference books:
Preminger, A., T. Brogan et al. (eds) The New Princeton Encyclopedia of
Poetry and Poetics. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993)
[ISBN 0691032718].
Or consult any dictionary where the various entries are compiled by different experts in each field.
As far as medieval allegory is concerned, you will find an interesting theory of its development in:
Vinaver, E. The Rise of Romance. (Oxford: Clarendon, 1969)
[ISBN 0198120052].
Also useful to consult are:
Bloomfield, M.W. ‘Allegory as Interpretation’, New Literary History (1972) 3(2) pp.301–18.
MacQueen, John Allegory. (London: Methuen, 1970) [ISBN 0416080502].
On the defence of literature, you might like to read:
Osgood, C.G. (trans.) Boccaccio on Poetry. (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1978) second edition [ISBN 0672602652].
This chapter will discuss the Moral Fables, placing the work in its wider literary and historical context. As well as considering the beast fable form, there will be some discussion of medieval allegory.
Fifteenth-century Scotland was a period of political anarchy and violence. You may wish to read a history of the period, such as:
Croft Dickinson, W. Scotland from the Earliest Times to 1603. Re-edited by A.A.M Duncan (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1977) [ISBN 0198224656].
On the other hand, it was also a time of great prosperity for the mercantile classes (look at the ‘Fable of the Two Mice’), and culture and education were flourishing. James I had been a prisoner at the court of Henry V of England, where he came into contact with English literature and particularly the work of Chaucer. Here he wrote the Kingis Quair, a dream vision in rhyme royal, under Chaucer’s influence. This marks the beginning of the so-called Scottish Chaucerians – James I, Henryson, William Dunbar and Gavin Douglas – and the flowering of Scots vernacular literature.
The Scottish Chaucerians marked a break with the native tradition – they were writing not in Gaelic, but in a dialect of English, the language of Scotland’s traditional enemy. They looked back to Chaucer particularly because he was himself the creator of a literary vernacular. The Scottish vernacular was felt to be (like English a century before) inferior and inadequate as a literary language.
Activity
You may be interested to read Gavin Douglas’s comments on the linguistic problems of Scottish poets in the prologue to his translation of Vergil’s Aeneid, in:
Coldwell, David (ed.) Selections from Gavin Douglas. (Oxford: Clarendon, 1964) [ISBN 0815512763].
See especially ll.19–23, pp.109–118. Compare with these Henryson’s sense of his ‘hamelie language and…termis rude’ (Prologue, l.36). Read the whole of Henryson’s prologue in the light of these issues and the concerns of Gavin Douglas.
In part, like Chaucer before them, the Scottish Chaucerians were seeking to elevate their native language, in a society dominated by the language and culture of another country. In part, they were also seeking to create the high style, as in Chaucer’s Knight’s Tale or Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. This high style was not the only, or even the major, note struck by the Scottish Chaucerians. There is a strong sense of stylistic alternatives, in which the elevated ‘aureate’ style cultivated in English in the fifteenth century is balanced by the native tradition of the comic, the indecent and the blasphemous. (The aureate style is a highly elevated style of the fifteenth century, characterised by a marked preference for Latinate diction. See, for example, Henryson’s ‘Ane Prayer for the Pest’.) A good example of the interweaving of styles is to be found in the exchange between Chantecleer’s three hens after his disappearance from the barnyard (ll.495–543).
Activity
Analyse the styles used respectively by Pertok, Sprutok, Pertok again and then Toppok, paying particular attention to the complex shifts in tone and levels of style.
At what points are you aware that the speakers are hens? At what points do you forget this? What effect does this have?
We have no certain biographical information on Henryson himself, but there is a certain amount of speculative tradition about his involvement with the law and his later career as a schoolmaster.
Activity
Find out what you can of this speculative biography and consider the influence it has on your readings of the Fables.
In particular you might like to think about the shift from the law to education and the influence of these aspects of his life upon his work. You might also like to think about the elements of judgment, punishment and learning in the Fables and the relationship between them.
You will need to find out as much as you can about the formal characteristics of the beast fable and its development.
John MacQueen’s Robert Henryson: A Study of the Major Narrative Poems contains appendices on the Aesopic tradition and the beast epic. Marianne Powell’s Fabula Docet also contains a useful survey of the beast fable and beast epic traditions in the Middle Ages and their interactions.
The Aesopic tradition developed in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries into two relatively distinct genres: the Christianised, moralising beast fable and the Reynardian beast epic. The two did cross-pollinate and later examples often draw on both traditions. Sometimes, perhaps confusingly, the term ‘beast fable’ is used to cover all these different cases.
The Fables of Marie de France, who wrote in twelfth-century England in Anglo-Norman French, are a good example of the didactic, moralising beast fable. This kind of fable is primarily concerned with illustrating simple moral values. Animals are used to reflect the existence of moral types in human beings, in a relatively simple way. There is little attempt to represent moral ambiguity or psychological complexity in the characters, yet there is a faith in the ability of human beings to learn from moral examples, an affirmation of human free will and moral choice. Some of them also display an element of social satire, with the fable of the wolf and the lamb, for example, representing the oppression of the poor by the predatory ruling class.
The beast epic (the Roman de Renart) developed out of the new, ascetic, clerical culture of the thirteenth century, with its scepticism about human nature and the possibility of living up to ideals. There is a difference of form as well as spirit: the separate fables became elaborated into a coherent fictional world. Individual tales were woven together to create much longer poems, developing the notion of an animal kingdom, separate from but parallel to human society, with a monarchy, a court and a whole feudal hierarchy. The style is mock-heroic. The plot centres on the enmity of the fox and the wolf, focusing on tales of vindictiveness and one-upmanship so characteristic of both beast epic and the fabliau.
The beast epic is comic and highly satirical: it satirises all the most revered institutions of medieval society with a monkish cynicism, a contemptus mundi (Latin for ‘contempt of the world’) that views all human motives as selfish at best, at worst sadistic and predatory.
Both these traditions were inherited by Chaucer and Henryson. You may wish to begin your study of Henryson by reading Chaucer’s Nun’s Priest’s Tale. This is Chaucer’s version of the story of Chantecleer and the Fox (Henryson’s third fable) and is clearly one of Henryson’s sources for that tale.
Activity
Compare Chaucer’s version carefully with Henryson’s. What differences do you note? What information does this give you about Henryson’s attitude towards his sources?
You might like to extend your reflections to include other authors whose sources you can compare with the originals.
There is a great deal of information available about Chaucer’s and Malory’s use of sources, and careful research will reveal material also on Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and Sir Orfeo. In most cases, you can actually read the sources, many of which are available in translation where necessary. One important question to consider in looking at medieval literature is that of the relationship of the writer to the tradition in which he or she is writing. This does not at all exclude the notion of originality although, in medieval studies, it is necessary to define originality in terms quite different from those applicable to the modern novel, for example. Where modern notions of originality might require the invention of a new plot, medieval writers normally made use of pre-existing plots.
Activity
In what ways, then, does it make sense to talk about the ‘originality’ of a medieval author?
A whole book has been devoted to a study of Malory’s originality: R.M. Lumiansky, Malory’s Originality, which is detailed in the general reading list at the beginning of this guide. You might like to take a look at that. Try to build up a sense of the ways in which Henryson’s fables are either traditional or original, or both.
Different critics claim the descent of the Nun’s Priest’s Tale from the moralising beast fables of Marie on the one hand, or from the Roman de Renart on the other – the story is treated in both traditions. Of Henryson’s Fables, some derive from the moralising beast fables, some from the beast epic.
Activity
Read the introduction to the edition by Gopen for information about sources.
See if you can get a sense of the presence of the two traditions: the beast fable, with its moral seriousness, its spiritual and Christian teachings, its allegorisation (and thus spiritualisation) of the narrative meanings, and the beast epic, with its greater psychological subtlety, humour, social and political satire, and naturalism.
Allegory is a significant mode in the Fables. Put very simply, we might say that allegory is narrative as extended metaphor – that is, a form of narrative with two levels, the literal and the figurative. In medieval times, these two levels were understood as the literal and the spiritual. (Modern terms sometimes found are ‘tenor’ and ‘vehicle’.) Allegory is a difficult and complex topic. It is important for you to understand the meaning of this term.
Activity
Look up its meaning in a good dictionary of literary terms, such as those suggested at the beginning of this chapter.
Allegory was an important mode in the Middle Ages. In particular, it played an important part in the defence of literature by Boccaccio, one of the earliest explicit defences of literature in the Middle Ages. This defence forms part of Boccaccio’s De Genealogia Deorum (The Genealogy of the Gods), which we know Henryson to have borrowed from elsewhere. (Notice this example of the early influence of Italian humanism on Scottish literature). You might like to read this defence of poetry. It is available, published separately and in translation, as Boccaccio on Poetry, translated by C.G. Osgood, as also noted at the beginning of the chapter. The most serious charge against literature was that, as fiction, it was a form of lies. Dante had called it la bella menzogna (‘the beautiful lie’), but he also argued for its serious use as a vehicle for higher truth. Boccaccio develops Dante’s views, arguing for the fictional (or literal) level as a veil of higher truth (the spiritual meaning). Dante seems to be ambivalent about the value of poetry – does value reside in the beauty, or solely in the higher truth for which it is a vehicle? Does Boccaccio resolve Dante’s ambivalence?
Activity
Read Boccaccio’s arguments, and then reread Henryson’s prologue and the defence of literature contained there.
Focus in particular on the three conceits – the corn in the earth, the nut and shell,
the bent bow – and what they say about the two levels of allegory. What are Henryson’s views on the value and significance of literature? How do they compare with Boccaccio’s?
It is possible to detect a tension between the valuing of poetry for the sake of its higher allegorical morality and the humanist love of poetry for its own sake. This tension is carried through into the fables themselves, which are, like allegory, dualist in form, split into narrative proper and moralitas (the ‘morality’ at the end of each narrative). The relationship between these two is one of the most crucial issues in the reading of the Fables.
You will find that what follows will be most useful to you if you read through at least the first fable, the ‘Cock and the Jasp’, and note your reactions to the characters and then to the moralitas, before reading this section.
Perhaps you found yourself in sympathy with the Cock. His carefully articulated logical arguments perhaps seemed sensible, prudent, even wise; his beautiful rhetoric plausible, convincing, even impressive? Perhaps the moralitas came as something of a shock. How can this learned cock, so well-versed in the trivium of medieval education (the three basic subjects taught at school: logic, rhetoric and grammar – hence the term ‘grammar schools’) be the emblem or ‘type’ of ignorance, who has failed to recognise the jewel as the type of wisdom?
Activity
Now re-read the fable, paying attention the second time round to ways in which you are prepared for the moralitas, even when this appears unexpected to the first-time reader. You will find it valuable to be able to detect biblical allusions in the narrative: Henryson seems particularly fond of the parables from the Gospels, and the Book of Proverbs.
For example, note the conceit of the young girls sweeping out the house carelessly and losing jewels (ll.71–77). This can be seen as a covert reference to the parable of the lost piece of silver, which symbolises the Kingdom of Heaven (see Luke 15: 8–10). This theme of lost treasure is taken up in the moralitas, with references to the parable of hidden treasure (see Matthew 13:44) and the parable of the pearl of great price (Matthew 13:45). In the narrative Henryson further suggests that the jasp, discarded by the cock, will itself become hidden treasure again:
Bot quhen or how or quhome be it wes found,
As now I set to hald na argument…
Ga seik the jasp quha will, for thair it lay.
ll.115–116; 161
The theme of hidden treasure is itself covert and hidden in the narrative, but becomes overt in the moralitas, where the jewel is identified as ‘prudence’ (ll.127–8). This is based on Proverbs 2:3–6, which identifies the hidden treasure as knowledge and understanding. Compare Proverbs 8:11 and 3:15. The moralitas makes overt reference to the theme of hidden treasure as spiritual, not material, quoting Matthew 6:19–20. Notice also the reference to pearls before swine (Matthew 7:6).
It might be argued that Henryson capitalises here on the double form of the allegory, with its narrative and moralitas, to dramatise to the reader his own spiritual blindness, his inability to discriminate, like the cock, between the outer appearance and the ‘inward sentence and intent’ (l.117; my emphasis). The moralitas reveals that, in overlooking the spiritual dimension of the tale, we are like the cock. Henryson thus seems to direct us from the beginning to discriminate between human sympathies, emotions and sensuality on the one hand, and truth and wisdom on the other.
From the very first fable, then, you will notice there are often serious discrepancies between your understanding of the meaning of the narrative and the explanation of it given to us by the narrator in the moralitas.
Activity
This is one of the major issues you will need to think through for yourself in your reading of Henryson. Is this an artistic flaw or a deliberate device? And if the latter, what is its purpose and function?
Henryson’s form of the beast fable gives us narrative pleasure and moral profit in apparently separate doses. He often heightens the tension or contradictions between the narrative and the moralitas in various ways, thus raising uncomfortable questions about the simple assumption that one might serve the other. Does literature really provide the sugar coating that makes palatable the pill of morality, or does it subvert moral lessons for its own purposes? Is Beauty really Truth, and Truth Beauty?
Henryson polarises the narrative and the moralitas in various ways. In some cases, the fables appear to belong to the beast epic tradition, whereas the moralitates appear to belong to the moralising beast fable tradition. The narratives often seem to create a world of immorality, cynicism, injustice, corruption, oppression, violence and greed, but also of animal sensuality and joie de vivre. They often invite us to laugh and enjoy this world. The moralitates preach Christian and social values; they point to another world and different values.
Activity
How can we resolve, or at least make sense of this discrepancy?
You will need to give serious consideration to this issue and read the work of critics in this area with care.
You may also want to think about the political significance of the Fables – not only the possibility of specific topical allusions to James III, for example, or his favourites, but more importantly the question of the ideal state, a social order regulated by social justice and equity. Read fable 7, the ‘Lion and the Mouse’, with special attention, bearing in mind its position as the middle tale and its distinctive form, that of the dream vision. If you want more information on this genre, see Chapter 2 above, and/or read:
Spearing, A.C. Medieval Dream-Poetry. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976) [ISBN 0521290694].
Activity
Does Henryson believe that the ideal state can be achieved on earth, or is he pessimistic about human life and society? Is this utopia only achievable in heaven?
What is his view of human nature? Are we, as in the beast epic, determined by our animal nature – born to be either predator or prey, wolves or sheep, at the mercy of our drives and instincts? Is the only recourse legal restraint? Or are we, as in the moralising beast fable, capable of education and reform?
What are the implications of this vision for society as a whole? And, assuming that we make the choice not to become the wolves, the predators in society, how do we view the corruption and oppression in society? Are we being asked to resign ourselves to it, in the hope of a better hereafter, or are we being asked to commit ourselves to making a stand against that evil? What, ultimately, is the nature of earthly wisdom and ‘prudence’?
You might become interested in Henryson’s attitude towards literature itself and the problem raised by fiction for a Christian writer. You could contrast the obvious fictionality of the beast fable with the very different strategies adopted by Malory to deal with the issue of truth and lies. And, more difficult to pin down, what can you deduce about the attitudes of Chaucer and the Gawain-Poet to the issue of literature and truth?
These are some of the major issues raised by the Fables. You might also want to look at technical matters (e.g. the use of narrators – particularly the introduction of Aesop into no.8), the significance of metrical form (usually, but not invariably, rhyme royal), imagery, characterisation, plot construction, structure, developments through the tales, etc.).
Last but by no means least, a striking aspect of Henryson is his humour. You might like to compare it with Chaucer’s.
Activity
Would it be fair to call Henryson’s ‘black’ humour? What different means does he use to make us laugh? And how does the humour operate in relation to the serious issues? Does it, as some critics argue, reinforce the pessimism of vision, or does it soften the grimness? Does it alleviate, or exacerbate, the sense of tragedy in the life of man?
Having completed this chapter, and the relevant reading and activities, you should be able to:
1. ‘The use of animals in fables prevents the reader from pitying the protagonists and thus leaves his moral judgment unimpaired by emotional distractions.’ How accurate do you find this view as a description of Henryson’s strategy in his Moral Fables?
2. ‘Much mirth but little joy’ – do you agree with this evaluation of the Moral Fables?
3. Quhat is it worth to tell ane fenyeit taill
Quhen haly preiching may nathing availl?
What strategies does Henryson adopt to compensate for this difficulty?
4. ‘The fundamental problem for the Christian writer is the attractiveness of evil, the unattractiveness of good.’ Do you agree? Consider any work of the period in light of this comment.
Further aspects to consider could include analysing Henryson’s attitude towards our very human sympathies and natural affinity with the animal characters whose emotions, sensuality and instinctive drive for survival is the basis of our own human nature. All our worldly values, our individualism, our pursuit of pleasure, the sheer dynamism of our own desires, driving us on to seek fulfilment of them at the expense of truth and charity – all these reinforce the natural tendency to be bored by goodness, to glamorise outlaws and criminals and to sympathise with the wily fox who usually gets what he wants and gets away with it.
Activity
Does Henryson seem to you to disapprove of, or to sympathise with, this animal level of our nature and with the various animals in the fables?
Consider at some length the significance of choosing animals as characters and the ways in which they are used.
How much are we aware of them as animals? How often do we forget they are animals and simply read them as human beings? What are the effects of these different moments and the relationship between them?
At this point you might want to develop your study of Henryson in other directions, by comparing him with other writers of the period. You might, for example, be interested in comparing his vision of society and social degeneration with that of Malory, who was writing perhaps only a decade or so earlier. You might want to compare the social and political vision of these writers with that of Chaucer; perhaps your understanding of the historical contexts might inform your thinking about the ways in which the literature of the period has developed.
You might want to place Henryson more directly in the context of the Chaucerian tradition, developing your sense of his relation to his source – perhaps by focusing on the Chaucerian fabliau, so similar in some ways to the spirit and vision of the beast epic, perhaps by comparing the treatment of society in the fable with that in the General Prologue to the Canterbury Tales, or perhaps by looking at technical matters such as their use of narrators.
You might wish to look at other authors in relation to specific topoi – comparing the use of confession in the Fables with that in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, for example, or the pageant of the seasons in the ‘Preaching of the Swallow’ with that at the beginning of Fitt II in Sir Gawain.
Or you might want to read further works by Henryson. His Testament of Cresseid is a kind of sequel to Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde and also is unusual in medieval literature in its focus on a female protagonist; his Orpheus and Erudices is a version of the Orpheus myth; if you have read Sir Orfeo, you might like to compare these two versions.