The Legacy of "Orfeo"

As noted in a previous post and in one of my comments, Tolkien will be a major player in the contemporary conversations over the texts we're covering. Says the preface to "Sir Orfeo" on page 213 of The Broadview Anthology of British Literature, Vol. 1, "Tolkien studied the poem extensively and may well have been influenced by it in writing some portions of The Lord of the Rings." Indeed, there is scholarship that suggests this.

Tom Shippey's works on Tolkien, The Road to Middle Earth and J.R.R. Tolkien: Author of the Century, are two of the most insightful books on Tolkien that I have read. Perhaps by historical accident, Shippey's life closely followed Tolkien's own, inasmuch as he attended many of the same schools and even occupied the same chair at Oxford for a time. Ergo his look into Tolkien's work is unique in that his perspective on English Literature is most closely aligned with Tolkien's own.

On 34-35 of Author of the Century Shippey argues that the appearance of the deer on the path through Mirkwood, followed by the merriment of the elves in the forest, witnessed by Bilbo and the errant dwarves, is an obvious reference to "Sir Orfeo." Writes Shippey:

Orfeo's hunt is 'dim' because it is not clear he is in the same world as the
fairies, who chase beasts but never catch them. The dwarves' hunt is
'dim', more practically, because they are after all in Mirk-wood and
cannot see or even hear clearly. But the idea is the same in both places,
of a mighty king pursuing his kingly activities in a world forever out of reach
of strangers and trespassers in his domain. (Shippey, 35)

Interesting.

But "Orfeo" was of still greater import to Tolkien. As a linguist, he readily noticed that "faerie" ("fairy") was not merely a singular noun: it may be read as a collective noun as well. "Orfeo" afforded the justification for this reading in line 194: "With fairi forth y-nome." Compare the three renderings here:

Broadview (notes): "With enchantment [she was] taken forth."
Shippey: "She was taken away by the fairy-people" (Shippey, Road, 57).
Tolkien: "By magic was she from them caught" (Shippey, Ibid.).

The Broadview editors have chosen to emphasize the potency of the faerie, their locus of power, as the agency by which the queen was taken, whereas Shippey and Tolkien name the faerie directly--and plurally. Regardless, Shippey allows for the Broadview editors' reading of things: "'Fayre' in that context means 'glamour', the deceptio visus of the inhabitants of Fairyland" (Shippey, Ibid.).

This point is essential not only for The Hobbit, but for The Silmarillion and The Lord of the Rings as well. Lines 347-360 of "Orfeo" closely match Tolkien's description of "the Hidden Kingdom," Gondolin, in The Silmarillion (cf. Tolkien, The Silmarillion, chs. 16, "Of Maeglin," and 23, "Of Tuor and the Fall of Gondolin"). (Incidentally, "The Fall of Gondolin" was one of the earliest pieces of Middle Earth to be recorded by Tolkien.) Right down to the entrance wrought in stone, one could get the impression that Gondolin is really a close, although more au naturale, rendering of the faerie kingdom in "Orfeo."

In both The Silmarillion and The Lord of the Rings the concealment of elvish kingdoms closely resembles the experience of Orfeo with the faerie in "Sir Orfeo." The otherworldliness of Elu Thingol's kingdom of Doriath, closely guarded by the magic of his wife, Melian, seems a striking literary extrapolation of the Broadview editors' translation of line 194 discussed above. Similarly, this sort of enchantment also appears in The Fellowship of the Ring:

On the green bank near to the very point of the Tongue the Lady Galadriel stood
alone and silent. As they passed her they turned and their eyes watched her
slowly floating away from them. For so it seemed to them: Lorien was sailing on
to forgotten shores, while they sat helpless upon the margin of the grey and
leafless world." (Tolkien, 393)

In this particular case, the enchantment is not so much in the content of the literature as in its form. Tolkien has left the reader to question whether the enchantment is real, an actual occurrence, or merely psychological, an epistemic twist to which the reader and the characters have been subjected. And this question is also in the spirit of "Sir Orfeo": is it real, or merely a dream, a story?