1st Post: Orlando Furioso!

“Fencing. Fighting. Torture. Poison. True love. Hate. Revenge. Giants. Hunters. Bad men. Good men. Beautifulest ladies. Snakes. Spiders. Beasts of all natures and descriptions. Pain. Death. Brave men. Coward men. Strongest men. Chases. Escapes. Lies. Truths. Passion. Miracles” (9).

 –The Princess Bride

What William Goldman’s father promises of S. Morgenstern’s The Princess Bride (the authorial charade here is so perfect for the genre!) may easily describe Ludovico Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso.  I must admit I am extremely excited about this next reading list.  Already I am besotted with the Furioso (particularly the bits with the enchantresses and the hippogryff…).  It is an utterly delightful frenetic romp through a fantastical world and is rendered beautifully in Guido Waldman’s narrative translation (a clear superior to clumsier English poetic translations).  Ariosto’s epic romance poem was published in its original Italian in 1532 in forty-six cantos.  By the time an English translation was printed in 1591, by Sir John Harington, twelve versions had already appeared in France.  Orlando Furioso was a direct influence on Edmund Spenser’s Faerie Queene (Spenser openly avowed to surpass Ariosto’s achievement and most likely read one of the French versions).  Ariosto’s long poem may be said to be the basis for all early modern romance.

What strikes me about Orlando Furioso is how seamlessly it bridges earlier medieval chivalric romance and later, more self-reflexive, Renaissance romance adventures like Margaret Cavendish’s Assaulted and Pursued Chastity.  It feels in some ways very much like Wolfram von Eschenbach’s Parzival.  Both of these romantic epics are essentially fan fictions—continuations of earlier legends, and written in languages distinct from the original stories.  Where Wolfram’s source text is Chrétien de Troyes’ Perceval, Ariosto’s source text is La Chanson de Roland.  Both authors build on the original story structure and widen its geographical and topical scope.  Yet what I find exceptionally novel about Wolfram’s Parzival and self-consciously present in Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso is editorial critique.  When Parzival’s father Gahmuret leaves his first wife, the African queen Belacane, for more adventuring the author spills a significant amount of ink in berating the foolish knight for leaving such a singularly beautiful and wise woman (noting their ethnic and religious differences this is even more surprising for the period).  Ariosto poses social critiques in a similar fashion. 

In a scene that reminds me of Malory’s reworking of the poisoned apple episode in Le Morte d’Arthur—one that also questions the unreasonableness of certain law traditions—the hero Rinaldo learns from a group of monks of the plight of the significantly named Scottish princess Guinevere who has been accused of taking a lover unlawfully.  According to “the cruel and pitiless law of Scotland any woman, whatever her condition, who engages in union with a man, and is not his wife, must be put to death if an accusation is laid against her.  And she has no recourse against death unless a mighty warrior come and undertake her defence, maintaining that she be innocent and not deserving of death” (Canto 4 56-65, p. 37).  Rinaldo thinks on this a while, then replies:

            Is a maiden to die, then, because she permitted her true love to discharge his passion in

her loving arms? A curse on the man who imposed such a law, and a curse on the man who can suffer it!  She who is without a heart deserves to die, not she who confers life upon her faithful lover. / Whether it be true or false that Guinevere received her lover, this is no concern of mine.  Had she done so, I should blame her not at all, if she had only preserved her secret.  Her defence is now my entire care […] It is not for mea to vouch that she did not do it—I do not know, and could perhaps speak falsely.  What I will say is that she should incur no punishment for such an act, and that whoever devised these pernicious laws was unjust or downright mad: they should be repealed as evil, and new laws should be framed with greater wisdom. / If the same ardour, the same urge drives both sexes to love’s gentle fulfillment, which to the mindless commoner seems so grave an excess, why is the woman to be punished or blamed for doing with one or several men the very thing a man does with as many women as he will, and receives not punishment but praise for it? / This unequal law does obvious injustice to women, and, by God, I hope to show how criminal it is that such a law should have survived so long! (Canto 4. 56-72, p. 37-38). 

Ariosto’s choice of the name Guinevere clearly implies a reworking of the Arthurian myth and a critique of the central moral conflict and its mortal punishment.  In my further studies over the weekend, I want to explore the response to such a scene as this in early modern England.  Was this sexual freedom brushed aside as only an Italian way of thought, or did it resonate with the British as well?  Ariosto’s treatment of women so far has been refreshing and surprising.  I also want to read up more on this topic as well.  The maiden warrior Bradamant is wonderfully self-affirming and powerful, and is aided by equally fantastic women, such as the enchantress Melissa.  While the fleeing virginal damsel Angelica seems at first to be a stock character, in Ariosto even she is far less passive and far more calculating than her Spenserian and other romance counterparts. 

The inescapable comparison between Ariosto and Spenser is what I find the most frustrating.  I have always been a staunch supporter of The Faerie Queene’s merits and originally wanted to spend part of my dissertation attempting to bring more of the best moments to light.  However, within the first few cantos of Orlando Furioso I quickly realized that Spenser just stole his best bits from the Italians.  Many of the choice scenes or most memorable figures (like the doomed lovers changed into talking trees) from The Faerie Queene are pulled right out of Orlando Furioso.  As allegories, they may be doing more work (I look forward to reading more of Maureen Quilligan’s The Language of Allegory to explore this idea more), but as good reading fun they just aren’t as captivating.  Ah, well.

On a final note for this week’s post I would like to quote the opening to the seventh canto:

“He who travels far afield beholds things which lie beyond the bounds of belief; and when he returns to tell of them, he is not believed, but is dismissed as a liar, for the ignorant throng will refuse to accept his word, but needs must see with their own eyes, touch with their own hands.  This being so, I realize that my words will gain scant credence where they outstrip the experience of my hearers. / Still, whatever degree of reliance is placed on my word, I shall not trouble myself about the ignorant and mindless rabble: I know that you, my sharp, clear-headed listeners will see the shining truth of my tale.  To convince you, and you alone, is all that I wish to strive for, the only reward I seek” (Canto 7. 1-7, p. 60).

Compare this to Theophilus Lavender’s insistence on the truth of William Buddulph’s tale in his The travels of certain Englishmen into Africa, Asia, Troy, Bythinia, Thracia, and to the Blacke Sea And into Syria, Cilicia, Pisidia, Mesopotamia, Damascus, Canaan, Galile, Samaria, Iudea, Palestina, Ierusalem, Iericho, and to the Read Sea: and to sundry other places.  He argues that the true author “could never be perswaded to [publish his travels], but answered, that he knew how to spend his time better, and that he was not ignorant of the incredulitie of others in such cases, who will hardly beleeue any thing but that which they themselves have seen; and when they heare any thing that seemeth strange unto them, they reply, that travellers may lie by authority: but they are liers themselves which say so; for travellers have no more authority to lie than others, neither will they arrogate unto themselves more liberty to lie than others, especially being men that fear God as they (of all others) should be, who go down to the Sea in ships, and see the works of the Lord both by Sea and by Land, and his wonders in the deep.”

Ariosto understands something extremely important about the contract between story-teller and story-listener.  His assertion of truth (clearly a parody of contemporary travel narratives) comes just after a canto in which the hero is carried off by a hippogryph won from a battle with a magician, is taken to an enchanted island somewhere near India, talks to a man who has been turned into a cypress tree, and is ultimately bewitched by a cunning sorceress.  While the introduction to the seventh canto gently mocks the believability of the tale it also stresses the pleasure of maintaining a suspension of disbelief and highlights the core delight of hearing a story “just for you.”  The more carefully the author props up the struts of his or her tale the more willing you are to climb up them.  The tacit conversation between author and reader (the he knows that you know that the story isn’t real…but we are going to pretend anyway because it is more fun that way) begins to truly develop in the overlap of travel narratives and romance during this period.  I believe that this budding development starts in the Renaissance, gives the novel its potency, and flowers into some of the best Victorian adventure fiction tales and modern fantasy epics.