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Robert Henryson Quotes

Robert Henryson was a poet who flourished in Scotland in the period c. 1460–1500. Counted among the Scots makars, he lived in the royal burgh of Dunfermline and is a distinctive voice in the Northern Renaissance at a time when the culture was on a cusp between medieval and renaissance sensibilities. Little is known of his life, but evidence suggests that he was a teacher who had training in law and the humanities, that he had a connection with Dunfermline Abbey and that he may also have been associated for a period with Glasgow University. His poetry was composed in Middle Scots at a time when this was the state language. It is one of the most important bodies of work in the canon of early Scottish literature.

His writing consists mainly of narrative works highly inventive in their development of story-telling techniques. He generally achieved a canny balance of humour and high seriousness which is often multi-layered in its effects. This is especially so in his Morall Fabillis, in which he expresses a consistent but complex world view that seems standard, on the surface, vis a vis the major ruling power of the church, while containing critical and questioning elements. This range is further extended in his Testament of Cresseid with its more tragic vision. Overall, his themes and tone convey an attractive impression of humanity and compassionate intellect. He was a subtle rhetorician and remains to this day one of the finest in the Scots language.

Although his writing usually incorporated a typically medieval didactic purpose, it also has much in common with other artistic currents of northern Europe which were generally developing, such as the realism of Flemish painting, the historical candour of Barbour or the narrative scepticism of Chaucer. An example is his subtle use of psychology to convey individual character in carefully dramatised, recognisable daily-life situations which tend to eschew fantastic elements.



His surviving body of work amounts to almost exactly 5000 lines. Wikipedia  

✵ 1425 – 1506
Robert Henryson photo

Works
The Testament of Cresseid
Robert Henryson
Robert Henryson: 12   quotes 0   likes

Famous Robert Henryson Quotes

“Nocht is your fairnes bot ane faiding flour,
Nocht is your famous laud and hie honour
Bot wind Inflat in uther mennis eiris.”

Robert Henryson The Testament of Cresseid

Source: The Testament of Cresseid, Line 461.

“Lovers be war and tak gude heid about
Quhome that ye lufe, for quhome ye suffer paine.
I lat yow wit, thair is richt few thairout
Quhome ye may traist to have trew lufe agane.”

Robert Henryson The Testament of Cresseid

Source: The Testament of Cresseid, Line 561.

“Best thing in eird, thairfoir, I say, for me,
Is blyithnes in hart, with small possessioun.”

Robert Henryson

Source: Morall Fabillis, Line 387.

“For to be yong I wald not, for my wis
Off all this warld to mak me lord et king:
The more of age the nerar hevynnis blis.”

Robert Henryson

"The Praise of Age", line 6

“Than upon him scho kest up baith hir Ene,
And with ane blenk it come into his thocht,
That he sumtime hir face befoir had sene.
Bot scho was in sic plye he knew hir nocht,
Yit than hir luik into his mynd it brocht
The sweit visage and amorous blenking
Of fair Cresseid sumtyme his awin darling.”

Robert Henryson The Testament of Cresseid

Source: The Testament of Cresseid, Line 498.

“The nuttes schell, thocht it be hard and teuch,
Haldis the kirnill, and is delectabill.
Sa lyis thair ane doctrine wyse aneuch,
And full of fruit, under ane fenyeit Fabill.”

Robert Henryson

Source: Morall Fabillis, Line 15

Robert Henryson Quotes

“In breif Sermone ane pregnant sentence wryte.”

Robert Henryson The Testament of Cresseid

Source: The Testament of Cresseid, Line 270.

“His background is not simply the Abbey School of Dunfermline (where he is reputed to have been a schoolmaster), but the surrounding Scottish countryside and community to which he belonged. His wisdom – and his poems are very wise about life – evidently came from his having lived long and profoundly as a member of that whole Scottish community.”

Robert Henryson

John Speirs, in Boris Ford (ed.) Medieval Literature: Chaucer and the Alliterative Tradition (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1982) p. 85.
Criticism

Life , Wisdom , School , Communication

“Henryson's greatness is most plainly to be seen in the range of general principles and ideas which informs his poetry and which allows it to encompass tragedy and comedy alike. He is the most Shakespearian of the early Scottish poets.”

Robert Henryson

John MacQueen, in The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography vol. 26, s. n. Henryson, Robert.
Criticism

Idea

“Of Henryson as of Chaucer it can be said that the picturesque detail owes its effectiveness to the solidity and seriousness of what it grows from. Henryson's Fables (like La Fontaine’s – they deserve the comparison) do more than present types of human beings in animal guises and animals comically behaving like human beings; they build up a total and consistent society, both rendered and criticized.”

Robert Henryson

Patrick Cruttwell, in Boris Ford (ed.) Medieval Literature: Chaucer and the Alliterative Tradition (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1982) p. 326.
Criticism

Animals

“Ane Bow that is ay bent
Worthis unsmart, and dullis on the string;
Sa dois the mynd that is ay diligent,
In ernistfull thochtis, and in studying.”

Robert Henryson

Source: Morall Fabillis, Line 22.

Study

“Quha hes aneuch, of na mair hes he neid.”

Robert Henryson

Source: Morall Fabillis, Line 375.

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