Orfeo's Exile. The Nexus between Emotion and Reason

Seminar paper from the year 2015 in the subject German Studies - Older German Literature, Medieval Studies, grade: 1,7, , language: English, abstract: The goal of this paper is to provide the philosophical medieval notion of emotion and reason and subsequently to investigate how emotion and reason relate to each other in the poem "Sir Orfeo".

The Middle English romance "Sir Orfeo" is an anonymous poem of the early fourteenth century (1330-40) that has found great resonance with literary research and critique. It has been praised by multiple authors to be 'a small poetic miracle' or 'one of the most loveliest and charming of all Middle English Romances'. The romance deals with Orfeo, king of Winchester who fails to save his beautiful wife Eurodis from the underworld and who decides in consequence of this loss to leave his kingdom in order to live in the wilderness. One day he rediscovers Eurodis among sixty ladies, follows her to the underworld, succeeds to bring her back to his kingdom and to restore his power.