Aristeus pastor adamans: The Human setting in Henryson's Orpheus and Eurydice and its kinship with Poliziano's Fabula di Orfeo

This article discusses Henryson's Orpheus and Eurydice comparing it with Poliziano's Fabula di Orpheo, occasionally considered Henryson's source. The comparison first draws on the texts' relationship with their Latin sources, Virgil, Ovid, Boethius and, in the case of Henryson, Boethius' commentator Trivet. It then centres on the treatment of the characters, particularly Aristeus: for Poliziano, a love‐lorn shepherd; for Henryson, with less assured poetic results, a more complex figure, attempting to reconcile classical tradition with Christian allegorical interpretation. The comparison prompts a definition of humanism that takes into consideration the particular conditions and cultural limitations of Scottish humanism. It concentrates on Aristeus, in some classical versions the true protagonist of the story, in others so marginal as to deserve anonymity or to disappear altogether. Medieval versions of the myth pay great attention to Aristeus in the allegorical and/or moral readings of the myth; the article analyzes this change of perspective, highlighting the discrepancy between the decidedly negative role of Aristeus in the narrative and his status in post-classical interpretation; in Nicholas Trivet’s reading of Boethius’s De Consolatione, one of Henryson’s sources, Aristeus represents virtus; his desire for Eurydice becomes a natural inclination of the soul to influence the pars affectiva. Both poets are faced with this discrepancy, and mark their distance from the medieval tradition by adopting an original reading of the myth. Some medieval elements are retained: Orpheus remains an amans fin as well as a musician whose powers give him access to the underworld; his courtly status enhances the parallelism with Aristeus, shifting the reader’s attention to a love contest that has many affinities with courtly poetry. With Eurydice’s death and Orpheus’s divine adventure, both poets return to tradition, reviewing the catalogue of hellish torments and visions of literary tradition; but in the early part of the story the two poets show striking affinities. Both choose a bucolic setting, showing the influence of national medieval traditions (the anonymous Sir Orfeo in Henryson’s case); they diverge from tradition in assigning the landscape a key role in determining events; here Henryson is decidedly more original than his Italian counterpart, making use of a rhetorical strategy typical of his other, more famous poems, such as The Testament of Cressid: in his description of landscape and characters he uses graphic images tinged with local reference; his version of Arcadia prior to Eurydice’s death is grim with foreboding, while Poliziano sets only a simple contrast between his homely Arcadia and his erudite underworld. As for Aristeus, Poliziano shifts the perspective towards self-consuming love, restoring the quasi-rapist within the folds of Arcadia; Henryson undermines the shepherd’s good name and status, creating a character who is far away from the princely elegance of Orpheus and Eurydice, and giving him human motivations for his actions – in short, moving him away from allegory and towards realism. The article moves the comparison between Poliziano and Henryson beyond the issue of reciprocal influence, as explored by R.D.S. Jack and Roderick Lyall, and conclusively confutes Jack MacQueen’s hypothesis of a link between Henryson and the Florentine Neoplatonic circle, showing instead how analogous cultural premises led the two poets to a different attitude in their humanist attempt to mediate between classical tradition and medieval moralisation of the myth.