Sir Orfeo

The theme of loss and recovery centers around Sir Orfeo and his wife, Heurodis, who have their lives turned upside down after Heurodis’s encounter with the fairy world. Heurodis is plucked clean out of the comfortable human world, where she lived in “fairest bliss” (Line 31). When the fairy king informs her that she is to be abducted, she is so grief-stricken that she seems to go “mad” (Line 86). She scratches her face, drawing blood, and tears her clothes. She is so out of control that she has to be restrained, but still she shouts and raves and struggles. The loss she experiences is profound, but nothing can be done to prevent it. There is something precarious about the noon hour and the grafted tree in the orchard under which she sleeps. This is exactly the time and the place when the fairy world seems able to break through into the human world.

For Orfeo, the loss of his wife is overwhelming, so much so that he cannot continue in his former life. He renounces everything—his status, wealth, fine clothes, the allegiance of many nobles and knights. His life of ease and comfort, and his days of wielding authority, are over.