The Testament of Cresseid and the "High Concise Style"

Abstract

IT would, I think, be generally agreed that Henryson's Testament of Cre*seid possesses certain stylistic qualities which set it apart both from the rest of his own work and from most other mediaeval poetry in English and Scots qualities which have been well summed up by a later Scottish poet, Edwin Muir, in the phrase high concise style.' The reader of the poem is constantly being struck by passages which not only possess a deliberate simplicity capable of stirring up widening circles of suggestion but also compress much meaning into few words: