SOURCE: Noll, Dolores L. “The Testament of Cresseid: Are Christian Interpretations Valid?” Studies in Scottish Literature IX, no. 1 (July 1971): 16-25.

In this essay, Noll questions previous assumptions that The Testament of Cresseid is based in Christian premises.

Most students of Robert Henryson's The Testament of Cresseid have argued or implied that the poem is Christian in one or more respects—in its moral presuppositions, its theological framework, or its cosmological scheme.¹ For instance, Marshall W. Stearns believes that the Testament “totals the wages of sin in no uncertain way.” “… we have seen,” Stearns continues, “the effect of the poet's orthodox morality on the characterization and plot of the Testament, and it is clear that the poem was composed from a recognizably moral point of view.”² Tatyana Moran, whose treatment of Henryson as a moralist is quite harsh, says that Cresseid's leprosy is “a grim warning to women who...