WEBVTT NOTE The World Beyond Christian Europe in the Romance Epics of Boiardo and Ariosto 1 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:02.680 I'd like to thank Walter Block for inviting me 2 00:00:02.680 --> 00:00:06.520 to participate in this panel, Literature and Liberty. 3 00:00:06.520 --> 00:00:09.880 I came to the conference primarily to learn, 4 00:00:09.880 --> 00:00:13.480 but I'm happy to talk to you about two works 5 00:00:13.480 --> 00:00:16.480 that have been the object of my research for some time. 6 00:00:17.600 --> 00:00:21.960 I'm guessing that everyone here has read Atlas Shrugs, 7 00:00:21.960 --> 00:00:25.640 but very few, if any, have heard of, 8 00:00:25.640 --> 00:00:27.480 if not read, Bollardo and Ariosto. 9 00:00:27.480 --> 00:00:32.420 So, out of curiosity, has anyone read Bollardo's Orlando innamorato? 10 00:00:33.520 --> 00:00:34.460 My daughter doesn't count. 11 00:00:34.460 --> 00:00:40.040 Okay. And Ariosto's Orlando Furioso? 12 00:00:40.040 --> 00:00:48.260 Okay. So, this is actually typical because an Italian audience most likely would have read Ariosto 13 00:00:48.260 --> 00:00:52.520 but not Bollardo, and that's part of my point. 14 00:00:52.520 --> 00:01:01.960 So, my talk today or my main argument is that the individualism of Boyardo's Orlando Innamorato 15 00:01:01.960 --> 00:01:09.140 gives way to statism in Ariosto's continuation entitled Orlando Furioso. 16 00:01:09.140 --> 00:01:16.020 In my view, the canonization of the latter work and the obliteration of the former are 17 00:01:16.020 --> 00:01:24.020 are not unconnected to their opposing ways of treating the relationship between the individual and the state. 18 00:01:24.020 --> 00:01:28.020 Now, in writing his Chauvaric poem in the 15th century, 19 00:01:28.020 --> 00:01:33.020 Boyardot had at his disposal two conflicting traditions. 20 00:01:33.020 --> 00:01:36.020 The first was Orthorian Romance, 21 00:01:36.020 --> 00:01:43.020 which celebrated individual knights wandering in the forest making a name for themselves through their valiant deeds 22 00:01:43.020 --> 00:01:48.020 and gaining the esteem and reward of their lady love. 23 00:01:48.360 --> 00:01:49.880 So think Lancelot. 24 00:01:50.740 --> 00:01:52.840 The second was Carolingian epic, 25 00:01:52.840 --> 00:01:56.400 which celebrated instead the paladin's adherence 26 00:01:56.400 --> 00:01:59.620 to the dictates of God, king and country. 27 00:01:59.620 --> 00:02:04.060 Duty was unquestionably held up as the greatest virtue 28 00:02:04.060 --> 00:02:07.020 and valor was demonstrated collectively 29 00:02:07.020 --> 00:02:11.300 on a field of battle against a Saracen or Muslim enemy. 30 00:02:11.300 --> 00:02:29.060 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. 31 00:02:29.060 --> 00:02:42.060 Never mind that in historical record, Charlemagne's Veergaard was ambushed by local Basques, but during the Crusades, the legendary version triumphed and proliferated. 32 00:02:42.060 --> 00:02:51.060 Both Arthurian romance and Carolingian epic were popular in Italy in the Middle Ages, sometimes with overlaps. 33 00:02:51.060 --> 00:03:03.060 Serious authors, however, like Dante and Petrarch, didn't hesitate to endorse Carolingian epic for its seriousness and disparaged Arthurian romance. 34 00:03:03.060 --> 00:03:12.060 Boyardot, on the contrary, emphatically affirms the superiority of Arthurian over Carolingian themes, 35 00:03:12.060 --> 00:03:16.060 And he says that whereas Charlemagne's court, and I quote, 36 00:03:16.060 --> 00:03:21.060 closed its gates to love and only followed holy wars, 37 00:03:21.060 --> 00:03:27.060 King Arthur's knights, quoting again, displayed their worth in many battles 38 00:03:27.060 --> 00:03:31.060 and sought adventure with their ladies, end quote. 39 00:03:31.060 --> 00:03:35.060 So he distances himself from the exclusive focus of one, 40 00:03:35.060 --> 00:03:40.060 preferring the multiplicity and open-endedness of the other. 41 00:03:40.060 --> 00:03:47.600 Boyardot's poem actually merges the two genres by turning Charlemagne's paladins into 42 00:03:47.600 --> 00:03:54.220 Arthurian-style knights who wander the globe and interact freely with characters from East 43 00:03:54.220 --> 00:03:59.260 Asia, Northern Africa, and the region we call today the Middle East. 44 00:03:59.260 --> 00:04:09.140 Throughout its over 35,000 verses, the poem celebrates and assumes the right of self-ownership. 45 00:04:09.140 --> 00:04:15.620 I've selected for your attention three moments in which a main character asserts his or her 46 00:04:15.620 --> 00:04:18.460 independence from state control. 47 00:04:18.460 --> 00:04:25.420 The character Roland, Orlando in Italian, had until Bollardo's poem kept his reputation 48 00:04:25.420 --> 00:04:32.220 as a stranger to love, even when the later narrative tradition imagines him married to 49 00:04:32.220 --> 00:04:34.900 his fiancée from the chanson. 50 00:04:34.900 --> 00:04:40.580 He vowed not to consummate his marriage until he could crown his wife the queen of a kingdom 51 00:04:40.580 --> 00:04:41.740 in Spain. 52 00:04:41.740 --> 00:04:48.860 Bollardo, therefore, shocks his early readers with the title Orlando in Love. 53 00:04:48.860 --> 00:04:56.880 The really scandalous news is that he's fallen in love with a Chinese princess named Angelica, 54 00:04:56.880 --> 00:05:01.620 and he sets out from Paris to the east in order to win her love through a series of 55 00:05:01.620 --> 00:05:03.460 adventures. 56 00:05:03.460 --> 00:05:09.860 This unprecedented story is an unauthorized biography of sorts that were told the original 57 00:05:09.860 --> 00:05:16.860 author, Torpen, had kept hidden in order not to embarrass our knight. 58 00:05:16.860 --> 00:05:21.700 Although Orlando is ridiculed by the author for his blundering and naivete when it comes 59 00:05:21.700 --> 00:05:28.540 to women, he is contrasted not with the knights who remain back home with Charlemagne, but 60 00:05:28.540 --> 00:05:33.980 but rather with two other knights who travel the globe as free agents, albeit for different 61 00:05:33.980 --> 00:05:41.700 reasons, the traditionally rebellious Rinaldo and the English knight Ostalvo. 62 00:05:41.700 --> 00:05:47.220 Whereas Rinaldo is whisked away through a stratagem, that's another story, Ostalvo leaves the 63 00:05:47.220 --> 00:05:52.260 Frankish court in open protest against the emperor. 64 00:05:52.260 --> 00:05:58.260 Charlemagne had abused his power by accepting a false story told to him by the treacherous 65 00:05:58.260 --> 00:06:05.300 This is Gano, Ganelon from the French tradition, and imprisoning Estolfo indefinitely without 66 00:06:05.300 --> 00:06:08.100 giving him a fair hearing. 67 00:06:08.100 --> 00:06:14.180 He's forgotten in prison and he's freed only months later when the Indian king Gradazzo 68 00:06:14.180 --> 00:06:17.460 captures Paris and the prisons are opened. 69 00:06:17.460 --> 00:06:23.380 When the English knight learns that Charlemagne is about to hand over Rinaldo's horse, Vallardo, 70 00:06:23.380 --> 00:06:31.340 To Gradazzo, he challenges the invader single-handedly, defending the private property of his absent 71 00:06:31.340 --> 00:06:32.460 friend. 72 00:06:32.460 --> 00:06:37.840 He asserts that, and I quote, Charles did not own the steed. 73 00:06:37.840 --> 00:06:44.940 So if Gradazzo wanted it, he'd have to fight him, Astolfo, in the field. 74 00:06:44.940 --> 00:06:50.340 When Astolfo unexpectedly defeats Gradazzo out of sight of the court, he then plays a 75 00:06:50.340 --> 00:06:54.420 There's a joke on Charlemagne with the complicity of the Indian king. 76 00:06:54.420 --> 00:07:00.300 He tells the group that he lost to Gradazzo, that he converted to Islam, and that he is 77 00:07:00.300 --> 00:07:03.380 heading east to serve as a court jester. 78 00:07:03.380 --> 00:07:09.580 Thus vindicated, even after revealing that this was a joke, he refuses Charlemagne's 79 00:07:09.580 --> 00:07:15.900 offer to remain in France, and he heads east in search of Orlando. 80 00:07:15.900 --> 00:07:22.740 Even when a knight is not in love or angry with Charlemagne, personal liberty comes before 81 00:07:22.740 --> 00:07:25.100 obedience to the state. 82 00:07:25.100 --> 00:07:30.420 The point is brought home in an episode that is central to the poem, the enamourment of 83 00:07:30.420 --> 00:07:37.060 the Frankish female knight Bradamante and the North African Ruggiero. 84 00:07:37.060 --> 00:07:42.540 When the Christian troops are retreating from southern France toward Paris, Bradamante initially 85 00:07:42.540 --> 00:07:49.180 allows the courteous stranger Ruggero to substitute himself for her in a one-on-one battle. 86 00:07:49.180 --> 00:07:54.740 After setting out to reach Charlemagne in retreat, Bradamante has sufficient autonomy 87 00:07:54.740 --> 00:08:03.580 to stop and say, quote, I'm bound to the High Emperor, but to myself and honor more. 88 00:08:03.580 --> 00:08:08.460 Her decision to place her own honor above feudal allegiance is what leads directly 89 00:08:08.460 --> 00:08:15.700 to Her Falling in Love with Her Future Husband and Fictional Co-Founder of the Estensei Family, 90 00:08:15.700 --> 00:08:17.400 the Dedicates of the Poem. 91 00:08:17.400 --> 00:08:25.540 Boiardo died a few months after the invasion by France of Italy in 1494, leaving his poem 92 00:08:25.540 --> 00:08:27.420 unfinished. 93 00:08:27.420 --> 00:08:32.900 The work was an immediate sensation, leading to continuations and rewritings in the following 94 00:08:32.900 --> 00:08:39.820 decades, including the Orlando Furioso, which Ariosto began in 1506 and published 10 years 95 00:08:39.820 --> 00:08:42.420 later in 1516. 96 00:08:42.420 --> 00:08:48.180 Although Ariosto continues to mix imaginary sites and the geographical reality of a rapidly 97 00:08:48.180 --> 00:08:57.020 expanding globe, he slowly superimposes Boyardal Shavarik foundations with a different ideology, 98 00:08:57.020 --> 00:09:02.860 one now based on the animosity between Christians and Muslims, consonant with the pattern established 99 00:09:02.860 --> 00:09:07.020 in the Old French Carolingian Cycle. 100 00:09:07.020 --> 00:09:13.460 The altered title of Ariosto's continuation comes from the fact that Orlando goes insane. 101 00:09:13.460 --> 00:09:17.080 He becomes furioso, or mad. 102 00:09:17.080 --> 00:09:22.660 As we later find out, Orlando's loss of his mind is a punishment by God for the night's 103 00:09:22.660 --> 00:09:27.360 misuse of his valor in pursuit of a pagan woman. 104 00:09:27.360 --> 00:09:33.520 After a three-month period, he is cured miraculously, I'll get to that in a moment, and returned 105 00:09:33.520 --> 00:09:38.480 to his original Carolingian role as defender of Christendom. 106 00:09:38.480 --> 00:09:43.760 This leads to the decimation of the North African city of Bizerta in a scene that recalls 107 00:09:43.760 --> 00:09:48.080 the sack of Jerusalem in First Crusade Chronicles. 108 00:09:48.080 --> 00:09:54.600 Ostalva was last seen in Boyardo's poem as he was being lured away from his friends by 109 00:09:54.600 --> 00:09:56.080 an enchantress. 110 00:09:56.080 --> 00:10:02.880 Ariosto imagines him, a prisoner on the Ferry's island, transformed into a myrtle plant. 111 00:10:02.880 --> 00:10:08.040 Although this form of suffering recalls Dante's Inferno, he is eventually released, and after 112 00:10:08.040 --> 00:10:12.680 a period of instruction on a nearby island, returned to the world. 113 00:10:12.680 --> 00:10:19.520 The Reformed Astolfo, we learn, has been chosen by God as his instrument in Charlemagne's 114 00:10:19.520 --> 00:10:21.680 victory over the Saracens. 115 00:10:21.680 --> 00:10:28.220 His principal task is to go to the moon to recover Orlando's wits, which he does under 116 00:10:28.220 --> 00:10:30.920 the guidance of St. John. 117 00:10:30.920 --> 00:10:36.040 The female knight Pradamante loses much of her autonomy with respect to both the state 118 00:10:36.040 --> 00:10:38.140 and her family. 119 00:10:38.140 --> 00:10:43.580 She remains at her southern French home for much of the poem as a dutiful daughter before 120 00:10:43.580 --> 00:10:47.320 taking on the role of dutiful wife in the final canto. 121 00:10:47.320 --> 00:10:54.920 The distinctive ideology of the two poems was noticed by the philologist Pio Rainer in an 1875 study. 122 00:10:54.920 --> 00:11:01.520 Referring specifically to Ariosto's negative treatment of Bollardo's Asian and African heroes, 123 00:11:01.520 --> 00:11:06.920 he chalks it up to the younger poet's desire to conform to the demands of his society. 124 00:11:06.920 --> 00:11:10.820 And I quote, whereas Ariosto sees Christians and infidels, 125 00:11:10.820 --> 00:11:16.920 Bollardo did not distinguish except between the valorous and the inept. 126 00:11:16.920 --> 00:11:23.720 the courteous and the uncivil. It's not that Ariosto in his heart believes more than Boyardot. 127 00:11:23.720 --> 00:11:28.600 He's an indifferent fellow who goes to church out of habit and to preserve appearances, 128 00:11:28.600 --> 00:11:35.080 but in any case he goes. Yet subsequent critics did not follow up on Reine's remarks through 129 00:11:35.080 --> 00:11:40.400 a sustained comparison of the two poems on this score, partially because of relatively 130 00:11:40.400 --> 00:11:45.240 little attention paid to the earlier poem. This is something that goes back to the second 131 00:11:45.240 --> 00:11:50.900 in the first half of the 16th century, the period of the Council of Trent and the Counter-Reformation. 132 00:11:50.900 --> 00:11:56.520 Ariosto was heralded as champion of the New Romance Epic in a process of canonization 133 00:11:56.520 --> 00:12:00.620 that extended to the physical presentation of the work by the publishers and included 134 00:12:00.620 --> 00:12:07.100 allegories, commentaries, and fancy illustrations, while Bullardo was basically ignored and published 135 00:12:07.100 --> 00:12:10.600 in a revised edition for three centuries. 136 00:12:10.600 --> 00:12:14.520 Those who do read the Orlando and Morato and find it to be a breathtaking work in its own 137 00:12:14.520 --> 00:12:18.640 and right, tend to try to explain away its misfortune. 138 00:12:18.640 --> 00:12:23.960 The most common line is that although Buiardo is more inventive, his language does not conform 139 00:12:23.960 --> 00:12:29.440 to standard Italian or there are too many characters or too many episodes. 140 00:12:29.440 --> 00:12:35.840 And in 1969 article, the critic Carlo Dionisotti proposed that the brief and squalid history 141 00:12:35.840 --> 00:12:41.000 of the fortune and misfortune of Buiardo should be the required subject of meditation of every 142 00:12:41.000 --> 00:12:47.160 are very real Italianist and periodically reproposed like the spiritual exercises of the Jesuits. 143 00:12:47.160 --> 00:12:49.360 Of course, that never happened. 144 00:12:49.360 --> 00:12:56.460 There are more books and articles, however, Boyardo is not in any way considered mainstream 145 00:12:56.460 --> 00:12:59.880 because he's not taught in the schools except for isolated examples. 146 00:12:59.880 --> 00:13:05.680 And I'd like to note that the novelist Ito Lo Calvino in the introduction to the popular 147 00:13:05.680 --> 00:13:11.680 A paperback edition of the Furioso actually dissuades us from reading other epics in relation 148 00:13:11.680 --> 00:13:13.100 to Ariosto. 149 00:13:13.100 --> 00:13:19.020 He says the Furioso is a unique book in its genre and can, I'd almost say must, be read 150 00:13:19.020 --> 00:13:23.760 without reference to any other book preceding or following it. 151 00:13:23.760 --> 00:13:28.920 Even a mega-reader the likes of Umberto Eco can blissfully acknowledge never having read 152 00:13:28.920 --> 00:13:29.920 it. 153 00:13:29.920 --> 00:13:34.860 During an event at the New York Public Library, he says, I have never read some masterpieces 154 00:13:34.860 --> 00:13:39.380 of Italian Literature, but I know more or less what they are about. 155 00:13:39.380 --> 00:13:44.540 When asked to admit to at least one masterpiece he hadn't read, he replies, Orlando and Ambarato 156 00:13:44.540 --> 00:13:45.740 by Bollardo. 157 00:13:45.740 --> 00:13:51.500 And he goes on to add, but I can, if not make a complete lecture, at least speak for twenty 158 00:13:51.500 --> 00:13:57.560 minutes about it, according to its relationship with Ariosto, with Tasso, because what I have 159 00:13:57.560 --> 00:14:02.420 learned through other books is exactly the position. 160 00:14:02.420 --> 00:14:05.100 You can find the video online. 161 00:14:05.100 --> 00:14:06.980 His audience was apparently okay with it. 162 00:14:06.980 --> 00:14:11.540 The title of the event was, how to talk about books you haven't read. 163 00:14:11.540 --> 00:14:17.900 But I can imagine all of you right now are thinking of the quote by Rothbard that Walter 164 00:14:17.900 --> 00:14:22.440 Block has at the bottom of all his email messages, making the necessary substitution. 165 00:14:22.440 --> 00:14:26.860 It is no crime to be ignorant of economics, which is after all a specialized discipline 166 00:14:26.860 --> 00:14:31.080 and one that most people consider to be a dismal science, but it is totally irresponsible 167 00:14:31.080 --> 00:14:37.060 to have a loud and vociferous opinion on economic subjects while remaining in a state of ignorance. 168 00:14:37.060 --> 00:14:42.860 So this morning, Tom Woods discussed the ongoing need to rewrite all of American history from 169 00:14:42.860 --> 00:14:46.600 a non-leftist and non-Neocon point of view. 170 00:14:46.600 --> 00:14:52.300 The reception of Boyard and Ariosto could be a case study showing the need for a libertarian 171 00:14:52.300 --> 00:14:54.840 view of literary history as well. 172 00:14:54.840 --> 00:14:59.620 I'll stop here and pass the microphone to my colleagues on this panel who have been 173 00:14:59.620 --> 00:15:00.620 doing just that.