Product Description

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.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #19702 in Books
• Published on: 2009-06-04
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 208 pages

About the Author
Seamus Heaney was born in County Derry in Northern Ireland. Death of a Naturalist, his first collection, appeared in 1966, and since then he has published poetry, criticism and translations which have established him as one of the leading poets of his generation. He has twice won the Whitbread Book of the Year, for The Spirit Level (1996) and Beowulf (1999). District and Circle, his eleventh collection of poems, was published in 2006 and was awarded the T. S. Eliot Prize. In 1995 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature.

Customer Reviews

The medieval world brought to life
This is a beautiful book, with Henryson's 15th century Scots on one page and Heaney's witty translation facing it. Thus the reader can test Heaney's translations line by line, or allow himself to be lost in the rythms and images he creates for us. If you have ever wondered how Chaucer's tale of the Trojan war (Troilus and Criseyde)could have continued, here is a fascinating option. If you have never read Chaucer the morality tale speaks for itself. I dare say there has never been a more timely warning.
"Lovers beware and take good heed to whom
You give your love, for whom you suffer pain.
I tell you there are few enough among them
To be trusted to give true love back again."

Disappointing
I was left with a feeling that the translation was rushed. I studied Henryson in university and found the poetry witty and punctual, expertly contracting philosophical ideas and humour in a successful beast fable form. Unfortunately this slim volume aims to merge a 'modern' idiom with Heaney's own poetical character, so successfully displayed in previous translations such as Sweeney Astray and Beowulf, that leaves the effect underwhelming. I found myself turning to the facing text to have a go at translating myself and often found that Heaney, for some reason desirous not to translate middle Scots words similar in structure to modern English, attempts to alter the scansion of the lines to fit in an extra syllable here, an extra word there. Perhaps a more ruthless editor would have asked for the translation to be re-worked. This problem disrupts the tone of the poems overall, as you often have to stop to go back and re-read a poorly constructed line (The Fox and the Wolf out of the Moral Fables is especially poor in this regard). Heaney is more successful when translating the Testament Of Cresseid, but even some of the problems which characterize the Fables are evident.
Overall I was left asking the question of why this translation was considered relevant. Obviously the commericality of the venture is paramount considering Heaney's clout in modern poetry sales. Why was a poet familiar with Scots dialogue not asked to translate? In fact, why translate at all? A serviceable edition of the poems - such as Fox's OUP edition from the 1980s - contains a glossary of Middle Scots words, and once a reader understands the reading conventions of the language, the work of reading the original becomes surprisingly pleasurable. While the Anglo-Saxon of Beowulf or the Middle Irish of Buile Shuibhne (Sweeney Astray) would require translation for an English readership, translating Henryson is less defensible, especially when the translation is as rushed as this is. I would suggest WRJ Barron's edition Selected Poems (Fyfield Books), which reproduces the original text and glosses some words, if you would like to experience the poetry of Henryson at first remove.