The World Beyond Christian Europe in the Romance Epics of Boiardo and Ariosto

0:00I'd like to thank Walter Block for inviting me to participate in this panel, Literature and Liberty. I came to the conference primarily to learn, but I'm happy to talk to you about two works that have been the object of my research for some time. I'm guessing that everyone here has read Atlas Shrugs, but very few, if any, have heard of, if not read, Bollardo and Ariosto. So, out of curiosity, has anyone read Bollardo's Orlando innamorato? My daughter doesn't count. Okay. And Ariosto's Orlando Furioso? Okay. So, this is actually typical because an Italian audience most likely would have read Ariosto but not Bollardo, and that's part of my point.

0:52So, my talk today or my main argument is that the individualism of Boyardo's Orlando Innamorato gives way to statism in Ariosto's continuation entitled Orlando Furioso. In my view, the canonization of the latter work and the obliteration of the former are are not unconnected to their opposing ways of treating the relationship between the individual and the state. Now, in writing his Chauvaric poem in the 15th century, Boyardot had at his disposal two conflicting traditions. The first was Orthorian Romance, which celebrated individual knights wandering in the forest making a name for themselves through their valiant deeds and gaining the esteem and reward of their lady love.

1:48So think Lancelot. The second was Carolingian epic, which celebrated instead the paladin's adherence to the dictates of God, king and country. Duty was unquestionably held up as the greatest virtue and valor was demonstrated collectively on a field of battle against a Saracen or Muslim enemy. Here the representative is Roland, the knight who in the Chanson de Roland, or Song of Roland, was betrayed by his treacherous stepfather, Ganelon, and died fighting Saracens in the Battle of Ranceval, the mountain pass between Spain and France. Never mind that in historical record, Charlemagne's Veergaard was ambushed by local Basques, but during the Crusades, the legendary version triumphed and proliferated.

2:42Both Arthurian romance and Carolingian epic were popular in Italy in the Middle Ages, sometimes with overlaps. Serious authors, however, like Dante and Petrarch, didn't hesitate to endorse Carolingian epic for its seriousness and disparaged Arthurian romance. Boyardot, on the contrary, emphatically affirms the superiority of Arthurian over Carolingian themes, And he says that whereas Charlemagne's court, and I quote, closed its gates to love and only followed holy wars, King Arthur's knights, quoting again, displayed their worth in many battles and sought adventure with their ladies, end quote.

3:31So he distances himself from the exclusive focus of one, preferring the multiplicity and open-endedness of the other. Boyardot's poem actually merges the two genres by turning Charlemagne's paladins into Arthurian-style knights who wander the globe and interact freely with characters from East Asia, Northern Africa, and the region we call today the Middle East. Throughout its over 35,000 verses, the poem celebrates and assumes the right of self-ownership. I've selected for your attention three moments in which a main character asserts his or her independence from state control.

4:18The character Roland, Orlando in Italian, had until Bollardo's poem kept his reputation as a stranger to love, even when the later narrative tradition imagines him married to his fiancée from the chanson. He vowed not to consummate his marriage until he could crown his wife the queen of a kingdom in Spain. Bollardo, therefore, shocks his early readers with the title Orlando in Love. The really scandalous news is that he's fallen in love with a Chinese princess named Angelica, and he sets out from Paris to the east in order to win her love through a series of adventures.

5:03This unprecedented story is an unauthorized biography of sorts that were told the original author, Torpen, had kept hidden in order not to embarrass our knight. Although Orlando is ridiculed by the author for his blundering and naivete when it comes to women, he is contrasted not with the knights who remain back home with Charlemagne, but but rather with two other knights who travel the globe as free agents, albeit for different reasons, the traditionally rebellious Rinaldo and the English knight Ostalvo. Whereas Rinaldo is whisked away through a stratagem, that's another story, Ostalvo leaves the Frankish court in open protest against the emperor.

5:52Charlemagne had abused his power by accepting a false story told to him by the treacherous This is Gano, Ganelon from the French tradition, and imprisoning Estolfo indefinitely without giving him a fair hearing. He's forgotten in prison and he's freed only months later when the Indian king Gradazzo captures Paris and the prisons are opened. When the English knight learns that Charlemagne is about to hand over Rinaldo's horse, Vallardo, To Gradazzo, he challenges the invader single-handedly, defending the private property of his absent friend. He asserts that, and I quote, Charles did not own the steed.

6:37So if Gradazzo wanted it, he'd have to fight him, Astolfo, in the field. When Astolfo unexpectedly defeats Gradazzo out of sight of the court, he then plays a There's a joke on Charlemagne with the complicity of the Indian king. He tells the group that he lost to Gradazzo, that he converted to Islam, and that he is heading east to serve as a court jester. Thus vindicated, even after revealing that this was a joke, he refuses Charlemagne's offer to remain in France, and he heads east in search of Orlando. Even when a knight is not in love or angry with Charlemagne, personal liberty comes before obedience to the state.

7:25The point is brought home in an episode that is central to the poem, the enamourment of the Frankish female knight Bradamante and the North African Ruggiero. When the Christian troops are retreating from southern France toward Paris, Bradamante initially allows the courteous stranger Ruggero to substitute himself for her in a one-on-one battle. After setting out to reach Charlemagne in retreat, Bradamante has sufficient autonomy to stop and say, quote, I'm bound to the High Emperor, but to myself and honor more. Her decision to place her own honor above feudal allegiance is what leads directly to Her Falling in Love with Her Future Husband and Fictional Co-Founder of the Estensei Family, the Dedicates of the Poem.

8:17Boiardo died a few months after the invasion by France of Italy in 1494, leaving his poem unfinished. The work was an immediate sensation, leading to continuations and rewritings in the following decades, including the Orlando Furioso, which Ariosto began in 1506 and published 10 years later in 1516. Although Ariosto continues to mix imaginary sites and the geographical reality of a rapidly expanding globe, he slowly superimposes Boyardal Shavarik foundations with a different ideology, one now based on the animosity between Christians and Muslims, consonant with the pattern established in the Old French Carolingian Cycle.

9:07The altered title of Ariosto's continuation comes from the fact that Orlando goes insane. He becomes furioso, or mad. As we later find out, Orlando's loss of his mind is a punishment by God for the night's misuse of his valor in pursuit of a pagan woman. After a three-month period, he is cured miraculously, I'll get to that in a moment, and returned to his original Carolingian role as defender of Christendom. This leads to the decimation of the North African city of Bizerta in a scene that recalls the sack of Jerusalem in First Crusade Chronicles. Ostalva was last seen in Boyardo's poem as he was being lured away from his friends by an enchantress.

9:56Ariosto imagines him, a prisoner on the Ferry's island, transformed into a myrtle plant. Although this form of suffering recalls Dante's Inferno, he is eventually released, and after a period of instruction on a nearby island, returned to the world. The Reformed Astolfo, we learn, has been chosen by God as his instrument in Charlemagne's victory over the Saracens. His principal task is to go to the moon to recover Orlando's wits, which he does under the guidance of St. John. The female knight Pradamante loses much of her autonomy with respect to both the state and her family. She remains at her southern French home for much of the poem as a dutiful daughter before taking on the role of dutiful wife in the final canto.

10:47The distinctive ideology of the two poems was noticed by the philologist Pio Rainer in an 1875 study. Referring specifically to Ariosto's negative treatment of Bollardo's Asian and African heroes, he chalks it up to the younger poet's desire to conform to the demands of his society. And I quote, whereas Ariosto sees Christians and infidels, Bollardo did not distinguish except between the valorous and the inept. the courteous and the uncivil. It's not that Ariosto in his heart believes more than Boyardot. He's an indifferent fellow who goes to church out of habit and to preserve appearances, but in any case he goes. Yet subsequent critics did not follow up on Reine's remarks through a sustained comparison of the two poems on this score, partially because of relatively little attention paid to the earlier poem. This is something that goes back to the second in the first half of the 16th century, the period of the Council of Trent and the Counter-Reformation.

11:50Ariosto was heralded as champion of the New Romance Epic in a process of canonization that extended to the physical presentation of the work by the publishers and included allegories, commentaries, and fancy illustrations, while Bullardo was basically ignored and published in a revised edition for three centuries. Those who do read the Orlando and Morato and find it to be a breathtaking work in its own and right, tend to try to explain away its misfortune. The most common line is that although Buiardo is more inventive, his language does not conform to standard Italian or there are too many characters or too many episodes. And in 1969 article, the critic Carlo Dionisotti proposed that the brief and squalid history of the fortune and misfortune of Buiardo should be the required subject of meditation of every are very real Italianist and periodically reproposed like the spiritual exercises of the Jesuits.

12:47Of course, that never happened. There are more books and articles, however, Boyardo is not in any way considered mainstream because he's not taught in the schools except for isolated examples. And I'd like to note that the novelist Ito Lo Calvino in the introduction to the popular A paperback edition of the Furioso actually dissuades us from reading other epics in relation to Ariosto. He says the Furioso is a unique book in its genre and can, I'd almost say must, be read without reference to any other book preceding or following it. Even a mega-reader the likes of Umberto Eco can blissfully acknowledge never having read it. During an event at the New York Public Library, he says, I have never read some masterpieces of Italian Literature, but I know more or less what they are about.

13:39When asked to admit to at least one masterpiece he hadn't read, he replies, Orlando and Ambarato by Bollardo. And he goes on to add, but I can, if not make a complete lecture, at least speak for twenty minutes about it, according to its relationship with Ariosto, with Tasso, because what I have learned through other books is exactly the position. You can find the video online. His audience was apparently okay with it. The title of the event was, how to talk about books you haven't read. But I can imagine all of you right now are thinking of the quote by Rothbard that Walter Block has at the bottom of all his email messages, making the necessary substitution. It is no crime to be ignorant of economics, which is after all a specialized discipline and one that most people consider to be a dismal science, but it is totally irresponsible to have a loud and vociferous opinion on economic subjects while remaining in a state of ignorance.

14:37So this morning, Tom Woods discussed the ongoing need to rewrite all of American history from a non-leftist and non-Neocon point of view. The reception of Boyard and Ariosto could be a case study showing the need for a libertarian view of literary history as well. I'll stop here and pass the microphone to my colleagues on this panel who have been doing just that.