ABSTRACT
Chapter 4 deals with the interpretive dynamics that fairies bring to romance narratives. Using the example of Robert Henryson’s Orpheus and Eurydice, it explains how fairies may contribute to the hermeneutic process without being bound by it and how representations of fairies produce self-referential texts that thematize their own structural operations. The argument explores a number of analogies between the liminality of fairies and the mirror-like nature of the Platonic khora. Investigating the khoratic side of literary fairies serves to direct the readers’ attention to the problem of what exactly fairies represent, the link between fairy romance and abjection and the interplay of demonization and liminality as it emerges from different versions of Sir Orfeo and Thomas of Erceldoune.
