Henryson's Doubt: Neighbors and Negation in The Testament of Cresseid

Abstract

The relation between Henryson's Testament and Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde is best understood not in the passive terms of lineage and inheritance but in the active terms of judgment and negation. Using the psychoanalytic trope of the Nebenmensch, or "next man," to position Chaucer's text as a "neighbor" to Henryson, the essay shows how the Testament sets out to negate the Troilus, first by doubting its veracity, then by entombing Cresseid, and finally by reanimating Troilus—a move that would have suspended, following the logic of imperial translation, the rise of England as Scotland's hostile neighbor.