The Myth of Orpheus in England

an Analysis ofthe Lay Sir Orfeo

Abstract

The present study aims to analyze the poem Sir Orfeo (fl. 13th century) as an exponent of the poetic genre lai, or lay, of French origin, on British soil. To this end, a historical overview of the poetic productions in the English context of the thirteenth century is traced, and then their form is analyzed, most notably about the possible influence of iambic tetrameter, and the plot of the poem, focusing on the classical aspects that make up the characters Orfeo and Heurodis. Finally, it also seeks to analyze the issue of the presence of the fairies in the poem, something that would be a way of merging the Celtic tradition with the Greco-Roman one. To support the research, we use the texts of Marie de France (1160-1215), a notable poet of the medieval genre, going through the later A Midsummer Night's Dream (1595-96), by the Elizabethan William Shakespeare (1564-1616), who also recovers the figure of fairies in a British context. The theoretical texts that lead the study are those of Kittredge (1886), Agamben (2018), Tolkien (2006) and the analytical psychology of Jung (2014), which, in short, lead to the conclusion that the lay is a rereading of the myth of Orpheus with the aim of creating an innovation in the genre by reviving elements of the Greek tradition related to the theme of overcoming mortality, something that possibly the anonymous poet had in mind when composing his work.