Introduction

Have you ever experienced inexplicable dread? The nature of our anxieties and phobias often lead to a precursory physical reaction – sweating, vomiting, or perhaps a pervasive feeling of horror and disgust. Before our rationale catches up to compartmentalise and explain away our fears, there exists that visceral reaction. The exploration of such reactions forms the basis of Julia Kristeva’s theory of abjection. I will be applying this theory to the experiences of Cresseid in Robert Henryson’s text The Testament of Cresseid. For context, Henryson’s Testament is what I deem a spiritual sequel to Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde: I believe the events of Testament occur after Book IV of Troilus and Criseyde.

I would also like to note that leprosy is now referred to as Hansen’s disease, to remove the stigma that has long been associated with the term. However, I will be using the term leprosy to refer to the historical context that Testament of Cresseid exists within. The titular character, Cresseid, after returning to Greece from Troy, is cursed with leprosy after denouncing and refusing to offer sacrifices to the deities she previously worshipped. Her reactions to her divine punishment, self-exile to live in a leper house and the description of her illness is worth examining under the lens of Kristevan abjection.

Approaching Abjection through the lens of stigma

So, how does Kristeva define the abject and its process? To briefly define abjection: it is the human reaction (feelings of terror, crying, vomiting) to a perceived threat that triggers a breakdown of meaning within the self. It is what is “permanently thrust aside in order to live” – through repression and rejection. (Kristeva 3) The abject is not the object itself that elicits fear, rather something intangible existing in the liminal space within the psyche. It dwells within the lines of established binaries, exemplified with the analogy Kristeva provides of the boundary between the living body and the human cadaver. (4) However, it isn’t the sight of the corpse itself that elicits the reaction. The corpse is an object; the dread that accompanies the visible corpse is the threat of the border of the established dead encroaching the border of the living. Abjection disregards the constructed boundaries that humans have placed to establish meaning – its threat lies within the destruction of order.

Abjection inherently leads to social stigmatisation and the subsequent marginalisation of vulnerable people. The act of abjection is the casting aside of what threatens a symbolic order of structure, of “identity, system, order.” (Kristeva 4) Disgust is a reaction that takes place during abjection – it’s not hard to imagine what occurs when this concept is applied to people that are deemed “lesser”. Throughout history, people who have been seen as undesirable “other”, or disruptive to society have been rejected socially. This abjection is also seen in the way that they have been physically outcast, living in groups separately from established society. The same abject space is seen in The Testament of Cresseid, where Cresseid exiles herself: she excludes herself from partaking in aristocratic society and transports herself to a leprosarium once she is afflicted with the disease. The leprosarium in which she lives exists half a mile outside of her former home – Cresseid dwells in the liminal space between life and death. Leprosy was incurable during the time this text was written: the very example of Kristeva’s descriptor of the abject as “death infecting life.” (4)

Cast aside as “Abject Odieous”: The leper’s body in The Testament of Cresseid

 Leprosy has been a disease that has held stigma throughout history, retaining the prejudices of the label into the modern period. An example of this was how the term leper was used interchangeably with HIV positive people. During the height of the AIDS/HIV epidemic, children suffered from this were termed “the new lepers”. (Chace) Abjection physically excludes the vulnerable, forming the basis of hatred. Although attitudes to disability were not monolithic, there existed the idea that disability was a punishment for sin or being born under the planet Saturn. (Historic England) Incidentally, Cresseid is punished for her sins in a joint verdict by Saturn, depicted as a malevolent entity, and Cynthia: the punishment being leprosy. In his introduction to the Testament, a strong association between sexual promiscuity and the contraction of leprosy during the Middle Ages is referred to. (Kindrick) Although Cresseid is punished for the sin of rejecting her former deities instead of her promiscuity, I believe Henryson’s characterisation of Cresseid as an implied prostitute prior to becoming Cresseid the leper links the two together, reinforcing the idea that leprosy and sin are causative.

“Hir face sa deformait”: Cresseid’s self-abjection

The presentation of leprosy is diverse: leprosy could potentially have an incubation period of up to a decade without any visible symptoms. This is the case for its visibility as well. Many lepers did not fit into the stereotypical mould of being blind and riddled with open sores. (Chace) Nevertheless, within the context of The Testament of Cresseid, our titular character awakens after a dream-like court sequence with the gods with the visible markers of end-stage leprosy. There is a Kafkaesque transformation in the rapid onset of her illness– waking with an “uglye lipper face” (Henryson, line 372) and being physically unrecognisable to other people, particularly Troilus, her former lover. Cresseid is renowned for her beauty prior to being punished with disease: the narrator specifically refers to her as beautiful and the gods refer to her fair complexion while doling out her guilty verdict. This overnight transformation clearly results in Cresseid becoming dejected and self-exiling to a nearby leprosarium. The reader is offered a glimpse of her psyche during her complaint within the confines of the leprosarium: this is where I believe her self-abjection is most visible.

Upon leaving Calchas (her father), it is interesting to note that she makes the decision to exile herself: a voluntary action. It reflects Kristeva’s description of someone who the abject resides in; “strays instead of getting his bearings, desiring, belonging, or refusing.” (8) The way in which Cresseid copes in the face of her imminent death aligns with self-abjection – like the deject described in Kristeva’s essay Approaching Abjection, her line of thinking exists within the context of where she is, rather than who she is. There is a form of denial present in Cresseid’s complaint before her acknowledgement of her mortality– namely by complaining about the quality of the food in the leprosarium and the straw bedding (when she used to sleep in a proper bed). She laments the materialistic in a fashion that may be interpreted as entitled – but I think Cresseid prioritising her formerly beautiful appearance and voice functions as a mechanism to avoid thinking of her imminent death.

Conclusion

Spoilers: Cresseid does end up dying from leprosy.

This blog post was inspired by the unexpected feelings of horror I experienced while reading this text for Middle English class. The Testament of Cresseid was a strangely visceral read for me: I incorporated Kristeva’s theory to try and puzzle out why. Perhaps it’s how contemporary Cresseid’s reaction to death is, despite her being a character in a text written in the 1600’s. Our modern ideas on the psychology of death would apply to her: Kubler-Ross’ stages of grief come to mind.

References

Chace, Jessica. “Diagnostic Medievalism: The Case of Leprosy’s Stigma: Disability Studies Quarterly.” Diagnostic Medievalism: The Case of Leprosy’s Stigma | Disability Studies Quarterly, 2019, https://dsq-sds.org/article/view/6410/5409#:~:text=Peter%20Allen%20observes%20that%20in,of%20lust%22%20(34).

Henryson, Robert. “The Testament of Cresseid: Introduction.” Edited by Robert L. Kindrick, The Testament of Cresseid: Introduction | Robbins Library Digital Projects, 1997, https://d.lib.rochester.edu/teams/text/kindrick-poems-of-robert-henryson-testament-of-cresseid-introduction.

Henryson, Robert. “The Testament of Cresseid.” Edited by Robert L. Kindrick, The Testament of Cresseid | Robbins Library Digital Projects, 1997, https://d.lib.rochester.edu/teams/text/kindrick-poems-of-robert-henryson-testament-of-cresseid.

“Disability in the Medieval Period 1050-1485.” Historic England, https://historicengland.org.uk/research/inclusive-heritage/disability-history/1050-1485/.

Kristeva, Julia. Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection. Translated by Leon S. Roudiez, Columbia University Press, 1982.