Sir Orfeo Analysis Essay

Sir Orfeo, written by an unknown author, employs a variety of poetic devices to immerse the audience in the tale and evoke a myriad of pathos. Throughout this short lay, the author calls upon the dichotomy of heaven and hell, creating an environment in which the reader remains suspended between the two, searching for truth in the world of Sir Orfeo. The fantastical setting of the lay gives the illusion of a beautiful and powerful kingdom, unmistakably loyal to their king, Sir Orfeo. The calm of the beginning of the lay is offset by the dark and ghastly kidnapping of the queen and the paradoxical beauty of the home of her captors. The pointed and frightening scenes differ drastically from the majority of the poem. The passage, in conjunction with its poetic
devices, culminates in a distinctly gruesome, yet magnificent spectacle. At the start of Sir Orfeo, fairies take Sir Orfeo’s wife from him despite his best efforts to protect her. A distraught and heart-broken Sir Orfeo then begins a self-imposed exile following the loss of his wife. After living in the woods for ten years, Sir Orfeo sees the fairies out hunting, as they often do, but on this day he notices his wife among them. Following the group to their glorious kingdom, Sir Orfeo takes in the marvelous outer appearance of the fairy castle. The castle appears glistening, white, and made of materials he has never seen before. Lines 387 to 404 capture the moment Sir Orfeo enters the gate to see that there is much more to the fairy kingdom than what meets the eye. The procession of death within the gates quickly overshadows the hallowed appearance of the castle.
Sir Orfeo observes people, who were thought dead, preserved in various states of pain and madness. The exterior celestial beauty of the fairy kingdom masks the destruction and deterioration within the castle. Initially the queen, Heurodis, represents everything expected of a medieval woman. She is “[t]he fairest” (53) and “[f]ul of love and godenisse” (55), yet one fateful Spring day the king of the fairies visits her in a dream. Within the dream, he threatens to take her. She awakes maddened, “And crached hir visage- it bled wete- / Hir riche robe hye al to-rett / And was reveyd out hir wit” (80-2), scratching her face, ripping her clothing, her beauty warps and devolves. The king later remarks, “O lef liif, what is te, / That ever yete hast ben so stille / And now gredest wonder schiller?” (102-4). He also comments on her bloodied appearance, and red covering her pure whiteness. The fairy strips Heuodis of her purity and sanity, juxtaposing the primary description and the description of the Spring surrounding her with life in the midst of the threat of death. Contradictory diction used to construct an unnerving atmosphere did not end
with medieval lays. In William Shakespeare’s The Tempest The character of Ariel is among the cast’s most ambiguous. With little detail given about the appearance and performance of this character, the director is left with a plethora of aspects to define. In his text, Shakespeare refers to Ariel as a spirit or sprite of the air. Without defined gender1 or form, Ariel serves the magical Prospero in his quest to escape the island on which he was banished (and to which Ariel is native), so that he may return to Italy in order to rule Milan once again. Prospero promises to set Ariel free once he has achieved this goal. Freedom is Ariel’s motivation, but from this point the audience is free to imagine Ariel’s personality as they choose. Without much detail of Ariel’s physicality or personality delivered directly, Shakespeare’s language provides the ground on which to build the character. In Act 3 Scene 3, Ariel appears not as a beautiful spirit or sprite, but as a harpy, a terrifying, fierce, bird-like creature under Prospero’s command. The speech that follows is wrought with negative diction, similar to that describing Heurodis. Ariel frightens the men that Prospero took captive on the island saying, “…you amongst men / Being most unfit to live. / I have made you mad; / And even with such-like valor, men hang and drown / Their proper selves”. Ariel, like the fairy king, reveals the self-harm that mortals may inflict upon themselves under the control of maddening magic. Magic warps the mind and the body, resulting in actions that are incongruent to previous characterization. These polarizing differences bring to light the question as to whether this magic is a force for good or evil, heaven or hell. The initially positive diction depicting the beauty of Heurodis and Ariel is overshadowed by the negative impact of mania and magic.