Erratum : Orpheus as a Sodomite in Two Elizabethan Epyllia

ABSTRACT

Orpheus's power to tame wild beasts with his lyre made him an embodiment of key humanist ideals in the Renaissance. Yet, to become such an exemplary model, his myth underwent a metaphorical sparagmos , a dismemberment wherein controversial elements, such as his failure to retrieve Eurydice and his introduction of pederasty to Thrace, were sanitized or excised. While the majority of Elizabethan masques, lyrical poems, and rhetorical treatises celebrated Orpheus's glorious attributes, R. B.'s epyllion Orpheus, His Journey to Hell (1595) departed from convention by explicitly confronting these suppressed themes, offering a satirical lens through which to reinterpret the hero. This article argues that the anonymous Legend of Orpheus and Euridice (1597) emerged as a direct response to R. B.'s text, attempting to rectify its controversial depictions—particularly regarding Orpheus's sexuality—and restore him as the quintessential Renaissance hero.