Abstract

박환희 Hwanhee Park The Importance of the Animal in Sir Orfeo. Medieval and Early Modern English Studies Volume 25 No. 1 (2017)   1-20


In Sir Orfeo, the human values such as harmony, loyalty, love, and marriage are validated through the main human protagonist’s appropriation of the animal. While previous studies have read the fairy kingdom as the contrasting Other to Orfeo’s Winchester, this study argues that the animals are the non-human entity that deserves critical attention. Animals in the poem are utilized primary as tools for elevating human qualities; by describing the animal as subjects to Orfeo’s musical harmony and passive, silent beings on whom the human can impose any identity as convenient, the poem demonstrates an anthropocentric viewpoint often found in medieval literature. In addition, the reliance on the animal to establish the human implies that the boundary between the human and animal is fluid, ad suggests that human identity is not completely separated from different groups of Others.

Keywords
Sir Orfeo, Animal Studies, animals in medieval literature, anthropocentrism in literature