SOURCE: McKenna, Steven R. “The Structure of Tragic Action.” In Robert Henryson's Tragic Vision, pp. 19-34. New York: Peter Lang, 1994.

[In this essay, McKenna scrutinizes Henryson's structural treatment of tragic action and the sense of identity of the tragic figure.]

Before dealing directly with the issue of the tragic figure's sense of identity, I wish to examine briefly Henryson's structural treatment of tragic action. In general, the poet's conception of tragedy most obviously concerns the downfalls of the various tragic figures in The Testament of Cresseid and the Fables. Broadly speaking, these figures can be seen to experience reversals of fortune, and in this Henryson reflects the general tragic notions of his age. The tragic figures experience adversity, and an attendant gloom informs their fates. The general notion of tragedy's link to the workings of an unpredictable and uncaring Dame Fortune derives in part from Boethius' Consolation of Philosophy (2 pr. 2 & 3 pr. 5), and the human tragic condition is summed up by him as a life of sin wherein death is the inescapable and inevitable conclusion (cf. Boethius' Treatise Against Eutyches 5.85 & 8.15ff.). Boethius conceives of fate as essentially the will of God, expressed through a logical progression of causes and effects. Because fortune is seen as directly linked to the divine will, the adversity felt by the unfortunate soul, or the tragic figure, is, in the final analysis, at least for the best if not entirely irrelevant in the grand cosmic scheme of things. (We need only consider Chaucer's Troilus ascending to the eighth sphere and smiling at human folly and the suffering it causes.) In brief, Boethius' Lady Philosophy tells the woebegone prisoner,

Etenim plus hominibus reor adversam quam prosperam prodesse fortunam. Illa enim semper specie felicitatis cum videtur blanda, mentitur; haec semper vera est, cum se instabilem mutatione demonsrtat. Illa fallit, haec instruit. …

(Consolation 2 pr.8)

For I think that ill fortune is better for men than good. Fortune always cheats when she seems to smile, with the appearance of happiness, but is always truthful when she shows herself to be inconstant by changing. The first kind of fortune deceives, the second instructs. …¹

These notions of fortune and its link to the will of God were not new to the Middle Ages, however. Intellectual support for these ideas can be gotten from the story of Job, whose misfortunes were systematically inflicted upon him as a test. It might seem that poor Job was arbitrarily chosen for Satan's and God's game, yet Job himself is painfully unaware of the transcendental causes of his sufferings. From his perspective, it appears that the benevolent God has suddenly and inexplicably become malicious.

What appears to be inexplicable and irrational and capricious Fortune from one perspective proves to have its logical and orderly basis when viewed from another. This notion of Fortune (or Chance) is summarized by René Girard:

Chance can always be trusted to reveal the truth, for it reflects the will of the divinity. … Modern man flatly rejects the notion that Chance is the reflection of divine will. Primitive man views things differently. For him, Chance embodies all the characteristics of the sacred. Now it deals violently with man, now it showers him with gifts. Indeed, what is more capricious in its favors than Chance, more susceptible to those rapid reversals of temper that are invariably associated with the gods?

(Violence 313-4)

For our purposes here, Henryson's tragic figures can be viewed in light of Christian doctrine with the preceding notions in mind. Unlike Job, Henryson's unfortunates are not apparently chosen at random. To a greater or lesser degree, all seek some form of accommodation with the material world, and as a result become subject to the ups and downs of material existence. There is a seeming inevitability to these tragic actions.² And, as Girard argues, fate and the sacred are linked. However, as I will argue in subsequent chapters, the tragic actions Henryson constructs ultimately show that the tragic figures themselves, not divine entities, are the instruments of their own fates, and thus achieve a divine, godlike capacity.

Mutability is the measure of the world, suffering is the result, and the will of God remains forever dark and remote. As Chaucer's Monk put it,

Tragedie is to seyn a certeyn storie,
As olde bookes maken us memorie,
Of hym that stood in greet prosperite,
And is yfallen out of heigh degree
Into myserie, and endeth wrecchedly.

(B² 3163-7)

A question must be raised here: to what extent is human tragedy a function of powers beyond human control (i.e. Fortune, for instance), or to what extent is tragedy a function of human action? Fortune, as a goddess and a concept, was seen in the Middle Ages as more than just a convenient literary convention. She (or it) was a vital power in the cosmos—a power that visited evil and suffering on humanity, particularly on the high and mighty, as the Monk points out. Hence, the notion of tragedy. Yet, in light of Christian doctrine, with its notions of an ordered cosmos presided over by a just God, the moral dimension of tragedy or misfortune needs to be considered. This is to say, misfortune can be viewed as a result of sin or a violation of moral law. In other words, it results from (tragic) criminality. So, the view of tragedy here is essentially bifocal. On the one hand we have Fortune (fate, destiny) which, in the tragic sense, can be seen as mere chance and the necessary byproduct of a material realm whose very nature is mutability. And on the other hand we have a religious value system that stresses sin, responsibility, guilt. The resolution of the two becomes problematic. To say that Fortune is reflective of the will of God is one way of going about this resolution. In fact, Dante in Canto 7 of the Inferno makes Fortune just such an agent of God, tending to the mutability of worldly wealth. Such a scheme is convenient, since it would explain what might otherwise be inexplicable. It would rationalize the falls from high to low of the high and mighty—those who would appear to command great powers in life. This would explain the tragedy of human existence. The suffering and destruction can thus be viewed as arising from something, some force or agency or god(dess) “out there.” In Henryson's Fables, the cat comes to the feast, the “cadgear cummis behind” (2226), and so on. Misfortune and death are threatening and unexpected. This view of Fortune, and the tragic theory which results from it, is essentially the theme of Boccaccio's De Casibus stories. Willard Farnham summarizes this notion of tragedy:

All the notable tragedies [in De Casibus] … show without exception that the mortal world (as distinct from Heaven) is ruled by fortune, the irrational spirit of chance. The fact that the power of Fortune is really the power of God … does not make Fortune any the less irrational. God simply has different methods of procedure in Heaven, which is perfect, and on earth, which is imperfect. On earth … there is no perceptible order of cause and effect such as would permit an ambitious man to avoid material misfortune by forethought, by wise judgment and action, or even … by the most perfect allegiance to God and the Christian religion. In other words, no man … has any control over his mortal fate.

(78-9)

This perspective on fate, and tragedy, would thus tend to subvert and even deny the possibility for human responsibility, for sin, and for tragic criminality. Human beings are helpless. A grim necessity is at work. Yet this view, as a possible reading of Henryson's conception of tragedy, seems to me to fall short of what the poet has in mind—particularly with regard to the issues of human responsibility and the criminality which underlie it. If anything, his vision of the tragic figure is dual—of failed possibilities (when viewed from the narrative perspective) and of achieved possibilities (when viewed from the tragic-heroic plane).

It may seem odd that I posit the notion that tragedy can represent success as well as the more familiar failure. I will stress that this is possible when we free our readings from the pervasive ideological orientation of Henryson's choric perspectives and look closely at the tragic possibilities in and of themselves. Henryson's tragic figures have purposes. They may fail to achieve what they desire, forces may be ranged against them, they may be destroyed in the process. But they have wills. And this is the key. When we are presented with mere victims, we may perceive tragic circumstances, but we are not fundamentally dealing with tragedy. Henryson's vision of tragedy is based in a sense of human criminality and responsibility—even when events, fate, get beyond the protagonist's control, even when the workings of Fortune seem insufferably obscure; from the very beginning tragedy is based on human action, and these actions carry with them an orderly logic which in the end points toward the tragic truth the figures are able to discover or reveal.

The conceptions of Fortune and her wheel that I have touched on here center on the progress of human movement from low to high and back to low. When we consider the pattern of action as portrayed in tragedy, we find a similar structural pattern—the old pyramid scheme of things. We can take The Testament of Cresseid as the paradigm here, though Gopen's structural analysis of the Fables also shows a climactic symmetry rising to a high point in fables 6, 7 and 8 (“The Sheep and the Dog,” “The Lion and the Mouse,” and “The Preaching of the Swallow”) and falling to disintegration at the end of the series (“Essential” 49). The structural pattern of tragic action, at least according to received opinion, traditionally leads to a catastrophe, a downturn, a denouement at the close of some falling action. This pattern of tragic action when plotted on the pyramid looks roughly thus:

	Climax
Rising Action		Falling Action
Exposition		Catastrophe

This pyramid construction of tragic action is essentially an angular version of the progress of the tragic protagonist on Fortune's wheel. This is a fairly standard way of viewing the structure of tragedies, and Henryson's Testament can fit quite neatly within this general pyramid structure. Indeed, it is the assumed pattern implied in all the relevant commentaries on the poem of which I am aware. The poet-narrator in his exposition of the background sets the scene wherein Cresseid has abandoned Troylus and in turn has been abandoned by Diomeid. The action rises as Cresseid blames Venus and Cupid for her own woes, and she blasphemes them in the process. The action reaches a climax with the parliament of the gods and Cresseid subsequently waking with the “seiknes incurabill” (307). She falls into progressively worse physical health, begins to realize that she has done wrong, and finally has the encounter with Troylus, leading to the realization of her own culpability in bringing to pass her tragic misfortune. The pyramid scheme is convenient when viewing the tragedy in this light, and the result harmonizes with the general medieval association, as I have outlined above, of a tragic fall being linked to the cyclical motion of Fortune's wheel. “Tragedye is to seyn a dite of prosperite for a tyme, that endeth in wrecchidnesse” said Chaucer (Boece 2 pr.2, 70-72; cf. 3 pr.5). However, I would like to suggest here that we can view the general scheme of The Testament of Cresseid in another, more important, and more profitable way—namely that the pyramid structure can be rearranged and inverted. Thus:

Catastrophe		Climax
Falling Action		Rising Action
	Exposition

This inversion of the structural pattern brings me to a fundamental notion of Henryson's conception of tragic action in general and Cresseid's tragedy in particular. Since the poet so clearly and carefully anchors his own poem in the audience's presumed awareness of Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde, and particularly in a knowledge of the events at the end of Chaucer's poem, we can view the catastrophe (Greek katastrephein, to turn down) in Cresseid's tragedy as having taken place before the action of Henryson's narrative begins.³ In particular, we can point to her rejection of Troilus in Chaucer's poem as the real catastrophe in her story. The action thus falls to a point where at the beginning of Henryson's poem we can view Cresseid at a low point in her existence. She has just been rejected herself by Diomeid and feels disconsolate, isolated, and utterly alone. From this perspective, her blasphemy of Venus and Cupid should not be viewed as catastrophic. Rather, it exposes in symbolic form her initial, catastrophic rejection of Troilus in Chaucer's version of the story. It is a blasphemy of courtly love, so to speak. “She thus seems to be accusing the gods of something that she will only experience as a result of the accusation itself, a suggestive example of the complexity of Fortune's workings” (Aswell 474).⁴ When Cupid calls the seven planets to order, the fact of “The seuin planetis, discending fra thair spheiris” (147) indicates the upset of cosmic order she has unleashed by her blasphemy. Mann sees this planetary movement as suggesting a larger pattern of movement downward and inward, the ultimate effect being “a poetic means of representing man's need to recognize his place in a universe whose laws are enacted through him and yet irrespective of him” (96). As McDiarmid has pointed out concerning the convocation of gods, “in their astrological characters they symbolize the totality of man's physical experience, his experience of Fortune's world” (Robert Henryson 102).

An important observation Sklute has made about Cresseid is that she functions as an “emblem of the permutable earth itself, which must of its nature change.” The upshot of this point is that by condemning Cresseid the gods are in fact condemning the earth itself, which Sklute notes is the “only body in the cosmos with a capacity for change, hence capable of error” (194-5). Yet significantly, as Sklute goes on to conclude, Henryson offers no formula to the women in his audience by which to avoid such error; nor does Henryson hold out the possibility of reward for avoiding moral error (196). The essence of this element of her tragedy is unresolved and perhaps unresolvable moral conflict.⁵

This blasphemy of the gods can therefore be seen to function as a catalyst which sets in motion physical and psychological events that help clarify and elucidate the tragic nature of the original catastrophe, the original downturn of her fortune—namely, her rejection of Chaucer's Troilus in favor of Diomeid. The blasphemy, both religious and courtly, by Cresseid is the sine qua non of her eventual tragic self-realization. It sets in motion the events that get her out of the protection of the Greek camp to a point where she is able to meet Troylus and thus see herself for what she is and what she was before the action of Henryson's own poem begins. For Cresseid, as opposed to the poet-narrator, the tragic effect is borne not through metaphysical consolation or stoic toughness so much as by her re-engagement with the society she has recently abandoned, by her address and warning to others that she herself is an example of how not to be. When viewed in this way, the action in Henryson's poem rises, not falls. Cresseid's blasphemy of the gods reflects the initial catastrophe, but it need not be seen in and of itself as catastrophic or even climactic.⁶

A similar pattern of action is apparent in Henryson's Fables as well, though here I wish to view the fables individually rather than (as does Gopen) as a whole. The changes of fortune that many of the animals experience, such as happens to the wether in “The Wolf and the Wether” or to the fox in “The Fox and the Wolf,” can be plotted along the traditional lines of tragic action. After the exposition, the action rises to a climax or crisis then falls to a catastrophe (denouement). Yet when we view the animals as the allegorical representations of humanity, as the poet and fable conventions encourage us to do, we can see that a catastrophe (downturn) for humanity has already occurred—namely that the tragic human condition is inextricably linked in the poet's mind with the fallen human condition as defined within the context of Christian doctrine.⁷ This tragic human condition is, as Steiner points out, a fate potentially common to all:

… the rise and fall of him that stood in high degree was the incarnation of the tragic sense for a … reason: it made explicit the universal drama of the fall of man. … By virtue of original sin, each man was destined to suffer in his own experience, however private or obscure, some part of the tragedy of death.

(12-13)

Since baptism washes away original sin, each person's life after baptism inevitably re-enacts the primal fall. In this sense, as I've mentioned above, the events in the Garden of Eden represent the prior catastrophe that then becomes the catalyst for all human history.⁸ And for Henryson the notion of history is a tragic one. We may see in this, then, an implied critique of the notion that history is under any sort of divine guidance (a critique that comes to the fore in “The Sheep and the Dog”). Carrying this one step further, Christ's crucifixion, especially as an issue in “The Bludy Serk,” changes nothing.⁹

In general, then, many of Henryson's Fables can be viewed individually, as can The Testament of Cresseid, in terms of rising action leading to illuminating climaxes that, if not tragic per se, in many cases carry tragic overtones. The rising action of these Fables thus clarifies and illuminates the nature of the original catastrophe vis-à-vis human identity—that is, the original act which resulted in the present bleakness of the human condition.

Specifically, we can point to the omnipresent theme of carnality in the Fables, for in Henryson's view carnality makes humanity bestial. We might even say that human carnality is a condition which leads people to tragic errors of judgment and more importantly reflects the essential criminality of sin. And, significantly, criminality can only exist within the context of cultural and religious values that define right and wrong. Take, for instance, the first fable, “The Cock and the Jasp.” Though this fable is no tragedy, it nevertheless sets up an important issue for Henryson's tragic vision. Here the cock's preference for food instead of the jewel is framed by the tale and the poet's moralitas in terms of carnality as opposed to reason. Implicit in the cock's attitude is the idea that we as human beings are prisoners of our own inescapable limitations of desire, reason, and spirit. The mind and soul are, in this view, fettered by the body and its needs. Rather than embodying pride, traditionally associated with cocks and the first of the seven deadly sins (in Gregory's ordering of them), the cock of this first fable seems rather to reflect gluttony, being as he is so concerned with the dictates of his belly. Significantly, the Cassianic order of the seven deadly sins places gluttony and lechery first because in Cassian's eyes these two sins were the most difficult to overcome, being as they are the two sins most closely related to the necessary human functions upon which survival depends—eating and reproducing.¹⁰

The cock's crime here, according to the poet-narrator, is thus his failure to live up to the spiritual and moral ideals of the poet's contextual Christian mythic and ideological system, governed as the cock is by the physical necessities of his own flesh. Yet, “The cock's speech, like Edmund's famous soliloquy in Lear, is a defense of natural man, common sense, and materialism” (Fox 344). Making the allegorical leap to the human realm, the poet's attitude on this issue is clearly and succinctly expressed in the “Prologue” to the Fables when he laments

Na meruell is, ane man be lyke ane beist,
Quhilk lufis ay carnall and foull delyte,
That schame can not him renȝe nor arreist,
Bot takis all the lust and appetyte,
Quhilk throw custum and the daylie ryte
Syne in the mynd sa fast is radicate
That he in brutal beist is transformate.

(50-56)

The Fables assume the fallen state of humanity, “How mony men in operatioun / Ar like to beistis in conditioun” (48-49). This relates precisely to the structural question: the tragic human catastrophe has already occurred. Humanity is presented in the image of animals, not God, in the Fables.¹¹ This theme with all its variations appears frequently in the Fables. For instance, in “The Fox, the Wolf, and the Cadger” the fox appeals to the wolf's greed, gluttony and sloth in the scheme to steal the cadger's fish. But more to the point, the first truly “tragic” fable, “The Fox and the Wolf,” has within it a succinct explanation of the tragic human condition as Henryson envisions it: “neid may haif no law” (731).¹² The tragic condition for the fox in this fable, and for humanity in general, is that the body and soul have different, competing, and ultimately irreconcilable needs. In the mortal realm, as Henryson presents it, the body usually wins out because of carnal, bestial, and biological necessity, and through this victory, when seen from the Christian perspective of the “law,” the soul comes out the loser. This so-called need and its dominance over the soul represents for Henryson the essential criminality of the tragic figures and their conditions in the Fables, for without the overarching Christian mythos there can be no tragedy or tragic dimension insofar as biological necessity, and all that springs from it, is concerned. Tragic action must take place in relation to some infraction of cultural or cosmic rules and limitations: biological need is bad; catering to it is thus not the best of all possible human actions. Also, if need may have no law, need may in fact be produced by that law. Likewise, the law can also be seen as being produced by human needs. Human desire may be a tragic force, but it also may very likely be a creative one as well.

Furthermore, the “need” as Henryson envisions it decidedly does not make of the human being a passive, suffering victim of powers beyond mortal control. To the contrary, the implications of many of the Fables' morals are that humanity exercises poor judgment, blinded as we are in our fallen state by corporal concerns. Yet for Henryson, the essential tragic dimension of this state of affairs is not so much the stock commonplace of traditional views of tragedy, that is tragedy being brought about by some fundamental error of judgment, though for him error certainly plays a crucial role. Rather, the Christian mythological context which frames the Fables indicates that the tragic dimension of the human condition is ultimately associated with cognition, volition and guilt. Error of judgment, like sin itself, results from willful action and leads to consequences. It is a playing out of the initial, catastrophic human condition. As an example here we can look again at the fox in “The Fox and the Wolf.” In this fable the fox reads his destiny in the stars.¹³ For him, Nature in its cosmic dimension offers a guide, even a caveat of sorts, but in the end he brings destruction down upon himself by stealing the kid and incurring the punishment and retribution by the goatherd. Khinoy says that “The Fox represents a certain kind of human effort to escape fate by means of worldly cunning or prudence. Insofar as human nature is animal-like, the effort is foredoomed” (105-6). In the main, this is true enough. This fox's criminality exists independent of the astrological messages of the stars and planets. It comes about through the dictates of the fox's character—that need in the fox which makes him unwilling and unable to forswear flesh. Presented with the law on the one hand (the wolf's administered penance to the fox requiring him to fast on fish until Easter), and on the other hand the biological need of having to eat flesh, the fox chooses to cater to his need. Hence, such behavior, when viewed from the narrative perspective, carries culpability and therefore punishment. The biological need may seem to imply a lack of control, but the message of the moral is that the animals, and by extension humanity, do exercise ultimate control over their fates. The initial condition determines the final outcome. If people create disorder and chaos for themselves and those around them, then this is a result of having been born with needs whose fulfillment breeds this disorder and chaos.

In general, then, Henryson's tragic vision, at least as he presents it in and through the Fables, involves most immediately an individual—a fox, a wether, a lamb, a mouse or whatever. This vision also encompasses society or humanity as a whole. Inevitably, when the tragic action begins, whether in the Fables or in The Testament of Cresseid, the tragic figure is in some way or other already isolated from social or metaphysical orders. Yet at the same time, tragedy would be lacking if these individuals did not share in some way with the tragic condition that is shared potentially by the whole of human society (cf. Mason 40-41). When we take Cresseid as an example here, we find a solitary tragic figure who is the focal point of actions that show the relative fragility and tenuousness of the mortal experience. Yet Cresseid herself ultimately is capable of more or less objectively viewing the forces which she has set in motion and which in the end destroy her. In this sense, she achieves and earns a philosophical perspective that elevates the personal into the universal. For Henryson, again, this condition takes on a distinctly Christian coloring and limitation—and thus a consolation. Greek tragedy, in contrast, always tends to see divine influence in human affairs, so as a result the human agent in this tradition is not given the responsibility the Christian must bear (see, for example, Sewall 52).

Here are two issues that are central to Henryson's vision—on the one hand, the matter of guilt and responsibility, and on the other the sense of averting sin and hence averting the potential for tragic destruction. The former applies to the tragic figures, and the latter to the choric poet-narrator. When viewed in light of the structural categories I've mentioned here, we can come up with the notion that, for Henryson, the climax of tragic action is for the most part devastating. Cresseid dies a miserable death, foxes are executed and the wether is eaten, lambs are fleeced and so on. These horrors are calmed by the poet's consoling vision, yet the very grimness of the tragic conclusions indicates that the tragic vision is far more ambiguous or ambivalent than the ostensible narrative perspective allows.

I should stress, however, that these categories mainly apply to the Fables and The Testament of Cresseid. The matter gets a good deal more muddled when we consider a poem such as “The Bludy Serk,” particularly in light of Peek's analysis of original sin in that poem. In brief, Peek argues that because the lady is abducted involuntarily Henryson's notion of original sin is that it is a condition rather than a fault. This, according to Peek, alleviates the burden of guilt from the soul and “places it directly on the evil giant.” The result in allegorical terms is that humanity is not responsible or guilty for its sinful condition, even though this condition is borne. Peek concludes that “The Bludy Serk” “minimizes the ‘First Fall’ or the idea of original sin and focuses rather on the people of the present and what their response should be to Christ for His saving action” (202). The upshot of this argument does, I think, apply broadly at least to the Fables, if not to The Testament of Cresseid as well. Original sin still remains the prior catastrophe for the tragic conception of the human race, the catastrophe which tragic action clarifies. We can perhaps see in “The Bludy Serk” an example, at least insofar as the lady is concerned, of tragedy averted. This is, I feel, in line with the narrative position and perspective as it gets articulated in the Fables and Testament. And an important consideration in regard to the poet-narrator's relation, or lack thereof, to his tragic protagonists—a consideration upon which I will expand in subsequent chapters—is that the narrative perspective is one context by which to understand action, yet to remove the tragic action from the tragic protagonist's context (which the poet likewise creates) is to do violence to the means and ends that the rising action explores and illuminates. The narrative focus on the spiritual and metaphysical ends of the human condition and the human experience of earthly existence tends to deny the relevance of the mortal realm, to the point of seeing human life as at best a situation that requires the utmost spiritual caution and at worst something to be avoided at all costs. Jamieson, along these lines, has raised the question:

… do we neglect this world's real beauties because they do not last? do we forget eternity because this world's beauties are genuinely attractive? what relation do this world's beauties have to the world that will last forever? are they temptations to seduce? are they patterns to lead on to a fuller understanding? Some of Henryson's fables make me feel he genuinely did not know, that, in poetry, he was trying it out.

(“To Preue” 31)

An issue these questions raise, which I will pursue subsequently, is how we as humans are to balance the needs of matter and spirit—particularly, how the world shall be served, to borrow Chaucer's Monk's question. For now, I would argue in light of Jamieson's questions that the progress of Henryson's tragic figures can equally draw attention to human existence in this earthly, mortal realm without the readily superimposed religious and condemnatory ideological conclusions that the poet-narrator applies in order to provide a meaning for himself and his implied audience. I think one of Sewall's points is well taken in its application to this bifocal vision in Henryson's tragedies:

As life during the middle ages became more stable and opulent and the things of life more fascinating, the Christian view of life as a preparation, of suffering as a discipline, and of death as the entry into the glories of eternal life, lost much of its power as the dominant image. One symptom was the growing interest, not in the end of the journey—the torment of hell or the blessings of heaven—but in the journey itself, the action through which man must go.

(54-55)¹⁴

This seems to me fairly adequately to sum up the dual perspective evident in Henryson's tragedies, the narrative perspective representing merely one view—the orthodox Christian view.

In the main, the tragic journey is our main concern at this point. I stress again that the emphasis on an external Fortune manipulating this journey misleads us from the real concerns of the tragic poet. Tragic criminality, not capricious Dame Fortune, not the convocation of the seven gods, not the apathetic and napping deity, is the real issue. I would argue that the beauty and terror of Henryson's tragic vision is achieved precisely because so much of the tragic action results from the criminality, the volition and the character of each of the tragic figures. Each is endowed with desire and purpose. There is a grim logic in the progress of these protagonists. And in these characteristics we may see the evolution of medieval tragedy toward the Renaissance conception.¹⁵ In this regard, Henryson was undoubtedly influenced by Chaucer insofar as the notion of human responsibility and criminality inform the tragic visions of both writers. For instance, Atkins argues:

That Chaucer's conception of tragedy was neither fixed nor completely thought out, seems … probable. … [H]e at least modified the idea that the tragic ‘fall’ was due solely to the caprice of a heartless and irrational Fortune. That deity is described in Troilus and Criseyde as the mistress of destiny … who, ‘under God’, was the controller … of events and their mysterious … causes. Yet at the end Troilus himself confesses that his downfall had been due to his own wrong-doing. … Similarly in The Monk's Tale frequent references are made to the influence of Fortune; though at the same time various disasters are also ascribed to sins of pride, misgovernment and the rest. And this conception of the tragedy of Fortune as a non-dramatic form of literature with an indeterminate tragic [hamartia] … was handed down to Renaissance times. …

(161)

We have, in Chaucer's tragedies, an emerging emphasis on the causes of the tragic catastrophe or climax, and this element of tragic narrative gains increasing emphasis in Henryson's treatment of the mode. In “The Monk's Tale,” Fortune is portrayed as a prime cosmic power, and when she goes, tragic falls result. However, the first tale is Lucifer's story, which can be viewed as emblematic of all others: “For though Fortune may noon angel dere, / From heigh degree yet fel he for his synne” (VII 2001-2). This claims that his tragedy results from action, not passivity, as is the case in some of the tragedies the Monk tells.¹⁶

A central feature of the movement of tragic action as Henryson constructs it is, as the initial catastrophe becomes illuminated, that the tragic figures gradually achieve forms of insight into the workings of the cosmos, and more importantly, into the secret truths about their own identities. If we again look to The Testament of Cresseid as the paradigm here, the outcast and detested tragic heroine finds, ultimately, that the grim truth of the self was present within her all along, yet, tragically, that knowledge comes too late to be of any practical use, and it comes as a result of events that she bears responsibility for setting in motion.

Notes

1. The translations of Boethius used throughout are from the Loeb Library edition.

2. Mandel has argued that “We lose sight of inevitability in the Middle Ages, when the Poetics was not known and when the very reverse of inevitability, namely the idea of fickle Fortune, was thought essential to tragedy” (31). This may be a suitable catch-all analysis of the body of medieval tragedy, but I feel that in the main this sort of view fails to do justice to the complexity of Henryson's own tragic vision. McAlpine, in fact, analyzes Boccaccio's De Casibus in terms of his reliance “on a structural formula that seems guaranteed to insure that the intricacies of any human career can be reduced to an intelligible pattern” (99).

3. In Chapter One I raised the point that the tragedy of human history in both Dante's and Chaucer's schemes began with the prior catastrophe of Lucifer's fall (cf. page 7). The next step in history, namely Adam and Eve, will be discussed below.

4. Gray, similarly, sees in the gods' function a “dark and questioning presentation of ‘drerie destenye’ …” (“Some Chaucerian Themes” 85). Craik refers to the gods as “supernatural machinery … a decorative fiction …” (24, 25).

5. Tymieniecka sees this as a characteristic of the tragic feeling in general (298).

6. McDiarmid sees the leprosy that afflicts Cresseid after this blasphemy in similar terms as I see the blasphemy itself. He says the disease is “no more and no less significant than what has already ‘fortuned’ to her, only more dramatically instructive” (“RH in his Poems” 37).

7. George Peek points out that original sin, as portrayed in “The Bludy Serk,” is a condition of fallen humanity for which we are not guilty, but is the burden we must all bear. This notion is equally applicable to the Fables and the initial condition which the tragic action illuminates.

8. Delumeau sees in this element of Christian civilization the presence of the macabre (246). Boccaccio himself saw the origin of tragedy in original sin. For a discussion of this, see Farnham (85).

9. Neuse (160) sees a similar critique of the crucifixion in the Croesus story in “The Monk's Tale.”

10. See Bloomfield's study of the ordering of the sins (105-6). See also Delumeau on the increasing gravity of Lust at the dawn of the modern era (214).

11. Clark says that this “creates an image of Aesopian literature [which is] harsh, almost misanthropic …” (5).

12. Khinoy notes that “though the appetites appear inevitable and irresistible, and the consequences seem dire, Henryson seems to offer no alternative” (109).

13. Hanham and Eade provide a detailed analysis of the astrological configurations in this fable. Cf. also Schrader.

14. In a similar vein, Segal points out that “Tragedy's rediscovery and popularity since World War II have filled a need for that vision in modern life, a need for an alternative to the Judeo-Christian view of a world order based on divine benignity and love” (23).

15. As Kerrigan and Braden point out about the emergence of Renaissance individualism, “To become conscious of the empty space between ourselves and external reality is to become newly conscious of the self as its own world, something separate from that reality. Detachment fosters a sense of particularized identity. … Renaissance intellectuals made strife, the overcoming of various finitudes, into a programmatic virtue …” (12, 85).

16. See also the tragedy of Adam: “he for mysgovernaunce / Was dryven out …” (2012); Samson: “Unto his lemman Dalida he told …” (2063); Hercules: a victim of the poisoned shirt; Nebuchadnesor: pride leads to punishment by God; Belshazzar: pride, killed when the city was overrun; Zenobia: purity, pride and power; Peter of Spain: betrayed by his brother; Peter of Cypress: killed by his brother; Bernabo Visconti: murdered in prison; Hugolino: Chaucer neglects to mention the treason that landed him in prison; Nero: pride; Holofernes: pride; Antioch: pride; Alexander: wine and women; Caesar: murdered; and Croesus: pride.