Opening Lines
It is worth noting that the opening of Henryson's Prolog to the Morall Fabillis echoes the opening lines of John Barbour's Brus. It is therefore a variation on the theme of the relation between truth and report in literature. For comparison, the first ten lines, of The Brus, composed in the 1370s, run:
- Storyss to rede ar delitibill
- Suppos that thai be nocht but fabill,
- Than suld storys that suthfast wer
- And thai war said on gud maner
- Have doubill plesance in heryng.
- the first plesance is the carpyng,
- And the tother the suthfastnes
- That shawys the thing rycht as it wes,
- And suth thyngis that ar likand
- Till mannys heryng ar plesand.
(Barbour, The Brus, lines 1-10)
Henryson's first stanza, written just over a century later, uses a number of the same (or similar) terms, but, in shorter space, generates a slightly less sanguine impression of the relation between narrative, audience and subject. The differences are subtle, but distinct:
- Thocht feinyit fabillis of ald poetre
- Be not al grunded upon truth, yit than
- Thair polite termes of sweit rhetore
- Richt plesand ar unto the eir of man;
- And als the caus that thay first began
- Wes to repreif the haill misleving
- Off man be figure of ane uther thing.
(Henryson, Morall Fabillis, lines 1-7)
Read more about this topic: The Taill Of The Cok And The Jasp
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