Jo Ann Cavallo

The romance epics of Boiardo, Ariosto, and Tasso : from public duty to private pleasure

In The Romance Epics of Boiardo, Ariosto, and Tasso, Jo Ann Cavallo attempts a new interpretation of the history of the renaissance romance epic in northern Italy, focusing on the periods three major chivalric poets. Cavallo challenges previous critical assumptions about the trajectory of the romance genre, especially regarding questions of creative imitation, allegory, ideology, and political engagement. In tracing the development of the romance epic against the historical context of the Ferrarese court and the Italian peninsula, Cavallo moves from a politically engaged Boiardo, whose poem promotes the tenets of humanism, to an individualistic Tasso, who opposed the repressive aspects of the counter-reformation culture he is often thought to represent. Ariosto is read from the vantage of his predecessor Boiardo, and Cavallo describes his cynicism and later mellowing attitude toward the real-world relevance of his and Boiardos fiction. The Romance Epics of Boiardo, Ariosto, and Tasso is the first critical study to bring together the three poets in a coherent vision that maps changes while uncovering continuities.

MARCO POLO ON THE MONGOL STATE: TAXATION, PREDATION, AND MONOPOLIZATION

IN HIS ARTICLE “Death and Taxes in the Netflix series Marco Polo,” Ryan McMaken writes: “Also prominent within the series is taxation, and those who collect and count taxes are three-dimensional and largely sympathetic characters in Marco Polo. Meanwhile, those who actually generate the taxes—merchants like Marco’s father—are either self-serving or ‘simply nameless rabble’” (18). With the second season of the television series currently set to be released at the end of 2015, this might be a good time to consider the relationship between tax producers and tax consumers in the Mongol empire according to Marco Polo’s own late thirteenth-century account, originally called the Le Divisament dou monde, literally translated as Description of the World, but more commonly referred to as Travels.1 The facts of history, after all, are better served through studying primary source materials than pop culture.

Talking Religion: The Conversion of Agricane in Boiardo's Orlando innamorato

❦Agricane’s final dialogue with Orlando under a starry night sky is one of the few episodes from the Orlando innamorato routinely included in Italian literature anthologies. Despite its status as “l’episodio forse piu noto di tutto il poema boiardesco”, however, it has not received much critical attention. 1 By taking account of the scene’s literary precedents and historical allusions, I aim to offer a new reading of Agricane’s eleventh-hour conversion. The attempt to convert ‘pagans’ was commonplace in the Carolingian narratives familiar to Boiardo’s early readers. Following a pattern established in the Entree d’Espagne , episodes often incorporated debates over the relative merits of Christianity and Islam. 2 The precedent most often cited in connection with the Innamorato’s conversion of Agricane is found in an Italian rewriting of the Entree d’Espagne known as the Spagna in rima. 3 That still anonymous work begins with Charlemagne calling for a Crusade against Muslim Spain and the pope granting plenary indulgences to those who fight against “la fe ria”. 4 When the

Crocodiles and Crusades: Egypt in Boiardo's Orlando Innamorato and Ariosto's Orlando Furioso

Boiardos Orlando Innamorato and Ariostos Orlando Furioso take quite opposite approaches to the Crusading ideology found in Carolingian epic. This article probes these differences by comparing their respective development of the episode of the magus Orilo/Horrilo at Damietta and its surrounding narrative context.

The Ghost of Boccaccio: Writings on Famous Women in Renaissance Italy (review)

considers an impressive array of sources from allied disciplines. The first part of Boccaccio’s Heroines shows how the De mulieribus claris served as a humanist exemplum and details the circulation it enjoyed among the major dynastic courts of Renaissance Italy. She demonstrates how the various legendary women whose biographies appear in Boccaccio’s work surface in artistic depictions of the day, and how the interplay between art and literature contributes to the definition of social values. The middle segment of Franklin’s Heroines deals, first, with women whose lives provide examples of self-serving, power-hungry females and, second, with women who have power thrust upon them and turn into effective rulers, wise companions, or simply clever, self-sacrificing players, such as the Minyan wives. She draws comparisons between Boccaccio’s exempla and their historical counterparts who interacted, within the bounds of acceptable behavior, with Quattrocento males. Franklin’s observations concerning the blurring of gender boundaries with regard to male and female virtues in the Boccaccian work are juxtaposed with the reactions of some Renaissance males to decidedly female achievement. The argument then segues into a discussion of how this gender blurring is manifested in contemporary artistic depictions, such as in the uomini famosi cycle at the Florentine Villa Carducci. The final chapter delves into the emerging role of the female consort in the late Quattrocento and her power within the male hierarchy. These women were expected to run a stable governmental operation in the absence of their husbands, thereby, in effect, controlling men. For her examples of this type of Renaissance woman, Franklin focuses on two remarkable females of the Este family: Eleonora d’Aragona, wife of Ercole I d’Este, and her daughter, Isabella. Both women personified Boccaccio’s fictional heroines who ruled wisely, within the bounds of legitimate authority and, at least outwardly, not because of personal ambition. What is most impressive is that not only did these women recognize the strength of their own authority but also that their authority was acknowledged gratefully by the men around them. In women such as Eleonora and Isabella, Boccaccio’s fictionalized, classical ideals became flesh and blood. Franklin’s work is replete with primary and secondary sources and examples from literature, history, and art history. Boccaccio’s Heroines contains little gems for students and scholars alike and makes a significant contribution to the existing body of critical thought on women in the Renaissance. ELIZABETH H. D. MAZZOCCO University of Massachusetts, Amherst