Artifice and Artistry in Sir Orfeo

Abstract

In half-century since Kenneth Sisam characterized Middle English Sir Orfeo as a Greek myth almost lost in a tale of scholars have struggled to synthesize these two apparently disparate elements into a unified reading of poem.1 The narrator has seemingly transformed ancient legend of Orpheus and Eurydice into a contemporary romance of a king Orfeo and his queen Heurodis. The Greek harper becomes an English minstrel, and some readers have explored meaning of this transformation through traditions of medieval mythography and music theory of Boethius.2 In Orfeo's loss of his wife and kingdom, his wandering in wilderness, and his final successful return, other readers have seen outlines of a specifically Christian allegory. Many of these scholars have explored exegetical resonances between Orpheus and David and Orpheus and Christ, and, in spite of differences in emphasis and technique, they share a view of Orfeo's journey as a kind of penance or pilgrimage of soul.3 Unlike his classical counterpart, however, Orfeo finds his wife not in Hell but in fairyland, and in defining precise nature of this other world, suggestions range from a version of Celtic world of the dead and taken to associations between fairyland and architecture of Revelation.4