Henryson, Robert | Douglas Gray (essay date 1979)
Douglas Gray (essay date 1979)
SOURCE: Gray, Douglas. “Shorter Poems.” In Robert Henryson, pp. 241-71. Leiden, Netherlands: E. J. Brill, 1979.
[In the following essay, Gray provides a comprehensive overview of Henryson's numerous shorter poems.]
The shorter poems attributed to Henryson are not as well known as they deserve to be.1 They are poems which belong to well-established genres, and they are of uneven quality, but the best show the distinctive and bold handling of traditional form and material that we have come to expect. I begin with a trio of satirical poems, and—with some hesitation—with The Want of Wyse Men. It is, in fact, far from certain that this poem properly belongs to the canon. It is not attributed to Henryson in either of the surviving texts, but its association with Orpheus and Eurydice in a single Chepman and Myllar tract has convinced most editors of its genuineness.2 In...
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