EN392 Lecture Notes - Lecture 14: Anthropomorphism, Lanval, Wild Beasts
EN392
Sir Orfeo & Sir Gawain
Sir Orfeo
• Artificial introduction
• Oral vs. written traditions in storytelling
• Breton Lays – Celtic tradition brought up again
• The role of the king to hear of marvellous things (fairy tale time)
• Thai refers back to kings ho’d ga a hap ad go aay plukig at a oae ad gie it a
name [comes from role of King David (ex-shepherd) known to play the harp and composed the
Book of Psalms in the Bible]
o “tess o the eatie poess e ofte do’t hae i edieal oks
o Seldom emphasize the attitude towards the author we have now
▪ Often unknown or good because the work appeals to authority
o They care little about originality
o Creating a song
• Giving it name – makes it more local
• Presumed high-class audience
o “i = kight
• First thing we learn of Orfeo is that he enjoys harping, which he taught himself to do
o If you can teach yourself to be a good harpist, you can teach yourself to be whatever
else you may hope to be as well (knight or king)
o When he plays, everyone assumes they’e i paadise
• His kingship is entirely secondary to his ability to play the harp
o Get traditional hero, masculine stud after
• Not auto-didactic stuff
o You ust speak o the kig’s aesty
o Kig Pluto kig of the eal of the dead ad Kig Juo
▪ Pluto not a positive figure at all – abducts and rapes his queen
▪ Juno a figure associated with marriage and laws
▪ Fit together wild and tame
• Connected with Winchester – the Kig’s out; usual hoie
o Near to there
• Economic term of his queen
o Herodius – Haod’s siste-in-law. The woman who dances for King Harrod and she
demands the head of John the Baptist as repayment for her dancing because he
compares her to a whore of Babylon
▪ Sexual luxury and domination of her step-daughter
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o Biblical tradition vs. his Latin tradition
o The tale is left behind soon after
o She is a beautiful woman
• May’s spig paty ey taditioal tie of loe, liese, ad paiig off
o Idea of greening of the earth
The story itself beginning with the abduction
• Same as Lanval in the sense you fall asleep in the late morning under a tree = trouble
• Symptoms of the abduction
o “he’s o he o
o Her activities are very detailed
▪ She scratches away at her face, hands, and feet, tearing away her beautiful
clothing
• The gorgeous, trophy-wife of a king so she decides to make herself ugly by scratching away at
her face and body
o Attack on her own beauty
• Tree fiddling with nature – earth comes back on you one way or another
• She represents fertility (she is meant to produce heirs)
o She is worried about her lack of fertility
o How conscious is this stuff?
• Crossing-over place into fairy world
o How is a human expected to identify this?
• What is Orfeo doing in all of this? Where is he? What does this say about their relationship?
• Dream is of a parallel universe
o The fairy king and queen hunt (normal for knight and lady)
▪ Different but also the same
o If she’s ot thee at oo, the faiy kig is goig to take he ad the out ill hae to
deal with it
▪ Orfeo prepared with his 10,000 knights
• Does’t udestad hat he’s up agaist supeatual
o How do you defend yourself against magic?
• Cousellos ould’t ee help
o She still disappears
• Orfeo should go try to save her but instead enters a decade-long depression, running off as a
Wildman, leaving his royal duties
• Orfeo only figures out that his queen is everything to him once she is gone
o He a’t ule ithout he
o He needs her to create an heir
o Attack on his masculinity – o atte if he shos up ith all his kights, it’s useless
o Now needs to find out who he is (idea of process)
o He blew it up in his prime duty of keeping the queen loyal
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