Robert Henryson and the Animal in the Mirror

Abstract

Although critics have debated the political topicality of Robert Henryson’s Morall Fabillis for several decades, they have left the Fabillis’ relationship to political theory largely underexplored. This essay examines the Fabillis’ creative engagement with and critique of fifteenth-century Scottish political theory, particularly its underpinnings in natural law. The prominent political treatises of fifteenth-century Scotland use nature and natural imagery to affirm human dignity and set a high ethical standard for princely governance. In contrast, Henryson’s Fabillis convey that the world is not governed by a benevolent Nature or natural law, as the political works would have it, but rather by the relentless force of bestial appetite in humans and animals alike. This critique is enabled by both Henryson’s relatively humble social position and his experimental mixture of beast fable with Reynardian beast epic and neo-Augustinian theology.