STARN: Scots Teaching and Resource Network
Robert Henryson
The Thirteen Moral Fables of Robert Henryson
A Modernised Edition
by R. W. Smith
Further Reading
To date, 1999, probably the best collection of Henryson studies available to the public is to be found in Dunfermline Public Library, Maygate, Dunfermline; The Henryson Collection. This ranges from full editions to extracted articles, dating from 1824 to 1991 and totalling some 72 items. The Collection is being added to, for there is still much work to be done on Robert Henryson. To present this list here would not be particularly helpful, as not all the works in the Collection deal with the Thirteen Fables, - but all can be recommended to those who would know more about this remarkable and somewhat neglected literary artist.
Best, at present, to recommend a few of the latest publications. And the most important and revealing of these is everything from the pen of John MacQueen. His Robert Henryson, a Study of the Major Narrative Poems (Oxford, 1967), is fairly readily available and a superb starting point, but Professor MacQueen has produced much more than that on Henryson, and at the time of writing, we are awaiting publication of his latest work. Be on the alert.
Another noted Henryson scholar, the late Matthew P. McDiarmid, has an excellent work on Henryson in the Scottish Writers Series (paperback, Scottish Academic Press, 1981), although the present writer is not too sure about his analysis of the Fables as a collection of unconnected tales; otherwise, this one is to be highly recommended.
The journal Studies in Scottish Literature is a fruitful source of Henryson reviews. Particularly relevant to the Fables : Rosemary Greentree, Debate of the Paddock and the Mouse, XXVI, 1981; W.A.Jamieson, Henryson's Taill of the Wolf and the Wedder, VI, 1968; Stephen Khinoy, Tale-Moral Relationships in Henryson's Moral Fables, XVII, 1982; Anthony Jenkins , Henryson's The Fox, the Wolf, and the Cadger again, IV 1966; Gregory Kratzmann, Henryson's Fables, the Subtelldyte of Poetry, XX, 1985; Donald MacDonald, Narrative Art in Henryson's Fables, III, 1965; Steven McKenna,Tragedy and the consolation of myth in Henryson's Fables, XXVI, 1991; and Evelyn Newlyn's Moral Fables of Aesop, XXV, 1990.
Most of the above can be found in the Robert Henryson Collection , which is for reference only, in Dunfermline Public Library.