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English > TESTAMENT OF CRESSEID > Flashcards

TESTAMENT OF CRESSEID Flashcards

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1
Q

Who’s translation made it popular?

A

Seamus Heaney, published 2009

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2
Q

Benson open questions in poem

A
  1. the role of the gods
  2. the justice of Cresseid’s guilt and punishment
  3. extent of her moral growth before her death’
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3
Q

How does Henryson famously challenge Chaucer’s authority?

A

He claims to be inspired by ‘ane uther quair’ (another volume), and challenges Chaucer’s authority; ‘who knows if all that Chaucer wrote was true?’

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4
Q

Chaucer’s Criseyde simply disappears from the text…

A

Henryson’s poem imagines her life after betraying Troilus

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5
Q

What does Benson argue?

A

That it’s a pivotal text for the shift from medieval to Renaissance literature

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6
Q

Henryson’s poem gives greater…

A

Prominence to the gods

Prominence to Cresseid’s moral agency

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7
Q

How was Cresseid defined almost exclusively by her relationship with men / by the men around her?

A

She was the lover of Troilus and then Diomede. After becoming promiscuous she eventually returns to her father.

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8
Q

Which gods does Cresseid blame specifically?

A

Venus and Cupid

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9
Q

The gods are introduced as both…

A

Mythological (gods)

Astrological (planets)

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10
Q

Saturne description

A

‘Out of his nois the meldrop fast can rin, / With lipis bla and cheikis leine and thin’

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11
Q

Who is ‘lady Cynthia’

A

Diana - the moon - ‘swiftest in hir spheir; / Of colour blak, buskit with hornis twa’

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12
Q

Crescent moon quote

A

‘darkling and in double-horned regalia’

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13
Q

Graphic description when Cynthia condemns Cresseid to leprosy

A

‘Your eyes so bright and Crystal I make bloodshot, / Your voice so clear, unpleasing, grating, hoarse. / Your healthy skin I blacken, blotch and spot. / With livid lumps I cover your fair face. / Go where you will, all men will flee the place.’

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14
Q

What was leprosy understood to be a sign of in the Middle Ages

A

A venereal, sexually transmitted disease understood as a sign of God’s wrath at sexual sin. Fitting punishment for someone who has been sexually unfaithful.

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15
Q

Cullen 1985 interpretation

A

Punishment provides opportunity for moral growth and development;

she learns to appreciate Troilus so excuses her faithlessness in life by faithfulness in death

Wholly dependent on the man

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16
Q

Felicity Riddy 1999 interpretation

A

Sees Cresseid as a figure of degradation and horror

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17
Q

Riddy quote

A

‘Cresseid the leper is [a] figure of degradation and horror who is […] positioned at the ambivalent coming-together of luxuria and vanitas, which are constantly intertwined and mistaken for one another in the poem’

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18
Q

Luxuria

A

Lust - one of the seven deadly sins; sexual excess and extravagance

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19
Q

Vanitas

A

Vanity - one of the deadly sins

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20
Q

Is the poem a tragedy…

A

Or an exemplum?

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21
Q

Cresseid moment of realisation and moral growth after Troilus throws her a bag of gold

A

‘Nane but my self as now I will accuse’

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22
Q

Who argues Cresseid earns sympathy and respect?

A

Benson

‘Henryson goes beyond compassion to respect, he shows his heroine moving from self-pity to responsibility’

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23
Q

Who argues she is degraded as an object of contempt?

A

Quinn, Riddy

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24
Q

What does Riddy argue about Cresseid’s fate

A

It’s not about defining herrrr, but rather serves to define the value of men, such as Troilus

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25
Q

Kristeva

A

Sin, disease and death are culturally associated with the female. Abjection - females as embodying things that men want to exclude from themselves.

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26
Q

Riddy draws on Kristeva…

A

To suggest that Cresseid is a figure of degradation and abjection: ‘abject odious’ - she is cast out of society and is odious to that society

27
Q

Riddy long quote Kristeva

A

‘The Testament Of Cresseid engages, in a way that is quite beyond the reach of Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde, with filth and pollution, with what Julia Kristeva, in Powers of Horror, calls the abject […] Kristeva argues that the process of abjection - of loathing and repulsion - is the means whereby the subject, or ‘I’, is brought into being’

28
Q

In what way is there a reference towards self-realisation & moral improvement in Cresseid?

A

Her legal personhood and textual identity - can be read as a legal testament. Cresseid writes her will perhaps reclaiming her legal standing.

29
Q

Matthews on Leprosy

A

Leprosy leads to ritual exclusion from society and loss of legal personhood; a leper would’ve been excluded and cast out of society, but would importantly lose their legal standing as a citizen before the law

30
Q

Who does Matthews cite?

A

Peter Richards history of leprosy - lepers ritual exclusion from society; dead to the world

31
Q

Boffey QUOTE on Cresseid’s final scene

A

The testamentary portion of the poem is, strictly, its final section, in which Cresseid utters a last confession and proceeds to make a written testament…. Cresseid nonetheless implicitly and ironically bequeaths her own story, as a warning exemplum, to the “fair ladyis”.

32
Q

What does Boffey’s account show?

A

how she becomes an exemplum; her life continues as a sort of moral lesson; at the end we are faced with a stark vision of what is left behind; we are left with words.

33
Q

What is Troilus’ epitaph engraved on her tombstone

A

“Lo, fair ladies, Cresseid of Troy the toun … Under this stane, lait lipper, lyis deid’ 608-610

34
Q

What three texts are there ?

A

Her will
Troilus’ epitaph
the poem itself

35
Q

Stark grim epitaph reminds us the poem is addressed to female readers…..

A

three references to ‘worthy wemen’ throughout the text

36
Q

‘Worthy wemen’ quote

A

‘Now, worthie wemen, in this ballet schort, / Maid for your worschip and instructioun’

37
Q

Texts to compare to (portrays the bodily punishment of a n unruly woman by supernatural forces)

A

Bisclavret and Sir Launfal

38
Q

Henryson affixes to Chaucer’s narrative a ‘textual limb’

A

‘textual prosthetic’ seeks to effectively conclude Criseyde’s narrative

39
Q

Thynne

A

printed tale as ‘sixth book’ to Chaucer’s poem - underscores text’s status as textual prosthetic; literally grafted onto Chaucer’s corpus

40
Q

I side with Felicity Riddy in contending that…

A

Cresseid’s bodily punishment highlights the instability of a unified, masculine self and its need to constantly exclude the feminine in order to produce the illusion of cohesiveness

41
Q

Who is the narrator?

A

suffers torments of unrequited love due to his old age, bemoans cold of Scotland and turns to Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde to chase away chill before tale of Cresseid.

42
Q

Medieval medicine characterised male bodies as…

A

hot and dry

female bodies: cold and wet

43
Q

Kristeva’s notion of the abject, a term that Cresseid uses to describe herself when she notes she is…

A

‘clene excludit, as abject odious’

44
Q

define abjection

A

the process by which the self asserts itself in opposition to the Other

45
Q

Riddy problem within masculinity

A

‘the problem that the poem is wrestling with is not a problem within femininity but a problem within masculinity: its own uncleanness, which is coded as feminine and rejected as polluting’

46
Q

Scholars which focus on the effects of the disease on Cresseid’s body

A
  1. Wynne-Davies
  2. Aronstein
  3. Riddy
47
Q

begging from house to house quote

A

‘This sall thow go begging fra hous to hous / With cop and clapper lyke one lazarous’

48
Q

Saturn and Cynthia decide to strike Cresseid

A

‘with seiknes incurabill’

49
Q

References to leprosy in Leviticus

A

locate disease as sign of ritual uncleanness and stipulate separation from religious community (13:44-6 and 14)

50
Q

traditional ‘uniform’ of the medieval leper

A

‘ane mantill and ane bawer hat, / With cop and clapper’

51
Q

Brody on leprosy

A

‘Cresseid’s leprosy is a particularly suitable punishment for her promiscuity. Not only does it ravish her beauty, but what is more, because leprosy was commonly understood to be a venereal disease, a consequence of lust, it makes her past sinfulness apparent to her and all who see her’

52
Q

Wynne-Davies quote

A

‘the destruction of her flesh appears to offer the possibility of redemption to others of her sex’

53
Q

Crsseid beseeches the ‘ladyis of Troy and Greece’ to

A

‘ane mirror mak’ of her and realise that their ‘roising reid to rotting sall retour’

54
Q

In Troilus’ conjuring up his lover’s face at the sight of the leper’s (Riddy)

A

‘loathing of and desire for the feminine can be seen to collapse into one another’

55
Q

Jana Mathews

A

Cresseid’s writing of her will is an act of speech that defies authoritative discourse, allowing her a ‘counter-space’

56
Q

Cresseid’s will

A
  1. leaves her body to the ‘wormis and taids’
  2. her clothing to the lepers
  3. a ruby ring to Troilus
  4. her spirit to Diana
57
Q

Moral Fable quote (574)

A

‘Nane but myself as now I will accuse’

58
Q

Narrator laments her ill-fortune (78-80)

A

‘O fair Creisseid … how was thow fortunait / To change in filth all thy feminite’

59
Q

Dichotomous refrain?

A

“O fals Cresseid and tre knyckt Troylus”

60
Q

Allusion to Cresseid’s prostitution

A

‘And sum men sayis into the court commun’

61
Q

The dream vision

A

‘this doolie dream’

62
Q

What marks the start of Cresseid’s complaint?

A

the different stanza form, the 9-line Anelida complaint found also in Chaucer’s work. The signifies a formal shift into complaint mode.

63
Q

Cresseid makes her self a visible testament

A

‘Heir I beteiche my corps and carioun…’

English (21 decks)

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