Discursive Instability in Robert Henryson’s ‘Sum Practysis of Medecyne’

Abstract

This essay foregrounds the monologic form of Robert Henryson’s ‘Sum Practysis of Medecyne’ in order to reconcile the various critical appraisals that have been made of it. Specifically, drawing from the definitions of monologism provided by E. Warwick Slinn, it is argued that Henryson’s poem encodes a satire not only of medieval medical practitioners, but also of medical practice and medical scholarship. Where scholars like Douglas Gray, Denton Fox, and Julie Orlemanski have emphasized the predominance of one of these satirical objects over the others, it is contended that only by way of the interplay of these objects in the discursive instability proper of the poem’s monologic form that the poem may be fully apprehended.