Sir Orfeo in the Otherworld: Courting Chaos?

Abstract

CR'T1USM of 'he Middl, English com,n" Si,-O i f ~ has rended co insisr on rhe essential inscrurabiliry of rhe relarionship berween rhe real world and rhe world of "fairi" into which Orfeo's wife, Heurodis, is so dramarically removed ar rhe beginning of rhe poem.I As A. C. Spearing purs ir, "The fairies in Sir 01feO are part of a brilliant imaginarive crearion, fascinaring and disrurbing, and we do rhe poem no service ar all by arrempring CO reduce rhem CO some more familiar and manageable concepr."~ForDerek Pearsall, rhe Fairy-King's Or herworld is so urrerly unknowable as co be in irse!f a symbol of "unknowableness"-rhe expression of "a supernarural power rhar was neirher part of Chrisrianiry nor, like classical myrhology, by rradirion sysremarically allegorized."1Such approaches in effecr deny even rhe possibiliry of a caregorical answer co such guesrions as wherher rhose people raken 1 am grateful to the Alexander von Humboldt Stifrung, to the Seminar f(ir Lateinische Philologie des Mirrelalters in the University of Freiburg and to University College Dublin for making it possible for me to take research-leave in Freibutg during 2002-3, where this essay was completed.

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