Narrative Afterlife and the Treatment of Time in Henryson's Testament of Cresseid

Summary

As she composes her final testament, the eponymous heroine of Henryson's Testament of Cresseid (likely composed before 1492) commends her soul to the goddess of chastity:

Thus I conclude schortlie and mak ane end:

My spreit I leif to Diane, quhair scho dwellis,

To walk with hir in waist woddis and wellis. (586–88)

When Cresseid dies shortly thereafter, the narrator brings his tale to a “sore conclusion” (614), relating her epitaph's statement that she “lyis deid” (609) and ending his tale with a brusque, “Sen scho is deid I speik of hir no moir” (616). This decidedly abrupt ending of Cresseid's story is imposed with an insistence that gives the reader pause; given the “flower of Troy's” explicit determination to redeem herself after her death, the narrator's refusal to address her cosmic fate seems slightly suspicious, an attempt to obscure the full story. The reader is left to wonder whether Cresseid has indeed “made an end” of her existence, or whether her wish to commune with Diana is granted. In other words, does Cresseid experience an afterlife? And, if so, what is its nature?

Most critics approach the question of Cresseid's afterlife by attempting to determine whether the poem's moral system is Christian or pagan. Denton Fox contends that by the end of the poem Cresseid achieves a Christian selfawareness and redemption despite her ostensibly pagan context; he argues that “Christianity and the condemnation of earthly love are clearly enough implicit at the end of the Testament.”