This post started as a comment on Aaron's post on Tolkien, but got a little out of control. While reading Sir Orfeo, I was reminded again and again of another of Tolkien's works: Smith of Wootton Major. In part, it is the language and the references to fairies that reminded me of Smith, but there are interesting similarities and contradictions in the stories as well. In many ways, Tolkien's story seems to play on the Orfeo/Orpheus story while almost reversing certain aspects of it. Both Sir Orfeo and Smith live in human societies that have some sort of contact with the world of fairies, and in both stories, a human is chosen to go, or be taken, to Fairy-land. In Sir Orfeo, however, Heurodis is kidnapped, and the Fairy-king's motivation to take her seems malicious but is not clear (although in Henryson's Orpheus and Eurydice, it seems to be her punishment for the sin of being a woman, or being a woman who actively courts a man - this article talks about how Heurodis, in comparison, is portrayed as pretty blameless for what happens to her). In Smith of Wootton Major, Smith is chosen when he is just nine years old to be granted special powers that, among other things, let him roam Fairy-land freely, and it seems to be because he is a kind and thoughtful boy who is somehow different from the others. He ultimately finds out that the king of Fairy is the cook of Wootton Major, who came to the town to work as an apprentice to Smith's grandfather, making the whole adventure feel almost like a family tradition.
Fairies are threatening in Sir Orfeo, and being taken to their world is a punishment (or a curse), presumably equivalent to being taken to hell in Orpheus and Eurydice. Although Tolkien's Fairy-land is described as "perilous" and certainly has threatening aspects of its own, it is a much more hospitable place than Sir Orfeo's Fairy-land, and Smith is imbued with a special protection that keeps him from harm. Several times in the story, Tolkien alludes to it being a place that reminds people of something familiar, but that they can't quite remember.
There are other similarities - there are certainly scenes in Smith of Wootton Major that evoke the ladies frolicking in the woods in Sir Orfeo, for example - but what I find the most interesting is that, just like the Sir Orfeo poet took the tragedy of Orpheus and Eurydice (I am assuming that the original story was more similar to Henryson's telling) and gave it a happy ending, Tolkien took the threatening aspects of the Orfeo story and turned them into something charming and comforting.
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6 comments:
Thank you for both reminding me of this charming story by Tolkien (which I hadn't thought about for quite some time, though I remember it well now that I consider it) and for using that story to illustrate yet another interesting difference between "Sir Orfeo" and "Orpheus and Eurydice" on the one hand and between medieval and modern uses of the fairy realm on the other.
Also, as per class yesterday, Usha, you've noted another device in Tolkien from the Medieval period: a character who was part of the kitchen staff. What's there to be said on this?
Aaron, I think that's a really interesting question, and I have this to add: after reading your comment earlier today, I, in a completely unrelated incident, picked up The Two Towers to read my favorite chapter, "Of Herbs and Stewed Rabbit," and it sort of hit me over the head that Sam's love of cooking ties in nicely with this. It's definitely something to think about - although Sam wasn't exactly a servant the same way Adam was (although neither were the cooks in Smith), and he certainly wasn't a member of the kitchen staff, there is that idea of a servant whose loyalty and bravery are absolutely essential to the protagonist's success. As for the cooks, I will say that I've read that Tolkien, while he disliked allegory, wrote Smith in part as a criticism of New Criticism - the grouchy cook Nokes represented the New Critics and the wise cook Alf (and his predecessor whose name I can't remember) represented the philologists. (I don't have any idea where I read this; it might have been one of Tom Shippey's books or wikipedia or somewhere else so I can't vouch for it's being true.)
Also, I promise a post completely unrelated to Tolkien tomorrow!
Food in general seems like an important tool in orienting characters into certain worlds. Persephone gets stuck in the underworld only after she eats the food there.
In LOTR, food seems to orient the hobbits in the world of the Shire. That is, food (and the bad quality of the food Samwise and Frodo find on the way to Mordor) is a constant reminder they are of the Shire. The foods remind them of their own world and, by highlighting their eating habits, identify them as belonging to a certain world, with a specific type of living habits and beliefs.
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