Sir Orfeo

Tales of love and knightly adventure that often included supernatural elements, medieval verse romances were intended to entertain their listeners rather than provide moral instruction. The stories were also meant to be recited aloud rather than read privately, and they were extremely popular for several centuries. There was always a ready audience, either at the king’s court or one of the great houses of the nobles, or in a tavern or public square. This was in the days before the invention of the printing press and before people developed the habit of reading such tales silently on their own.

There are a number of different categories of medieval verse romance. Sir Orfeo is classified as a Breton lai (or lay). Bretons are people who are native to Brittany, in northwest France, and they had a tradition of such storytelling. The lais would contain mythological, chivalric, and supernatural elements, the latter including the Celtic fairy world that features so prominently in Sir Orfeo.

Other examples of the Breton lai include Sir Launfal, by Thomas Chestre, which focuses on the Arthurian knight of that name, and Lay le Freine, which is derived from a lost original by an Anglo-Norman woman known as Marie de France.