Orlando furioso: origins of the text

La Chanson de Roland

The Roland who gave his name to Ariosto's poem is supposed to be the same Roland from La Chanson de Roland, the eleventh- or twelfth-century epic that recounted Charlemagne's defeat at Roncesvalles in 778, an obscure historical episode that pales in comparison to its immense literary fortune. Written at the time of the First Crusade (1096-1099), La Chanson de Roland makes Charlemagne a kind of crusader avant la lettre, and the confrontation between Christians and Saracens the major issue of his reign.

At the same time as La Chanson de Roland appeared a Historia Karoli Magni et Rotholandi, a chronicle written in Latin that recounts the same episodes. Attributed to Archbishop Turpin, it would be invoked again and again by later poets as the direct and trustworthy testimony of a contemporary of Charlemagne. Ariosto refers to it on several occasions, always to mock.

Arthurian cycle and Carolingian cycle

The thirteenth century saw the formation of the great romance cycles, which would gradually absorb and unify all the knightly stories told in verse chansons de gestes. While the great Arthurian cycle (also known as the Breton cycle) was taking shape, integrating the adventures of Lancelot and Tristan (the roman de Lancelot and the Tristan en prose), the Carolingian cycle follows the same evolution : the story of Roland, which until then had been summed up in his final battle and death, undergoes new developments in Italy and merges with that of another knight of Charlemagne who was Roland's cousin, Renaud de Montauban (Les quatre fils Aymon).

The Franco-Venetian literature that developed between the 13th and 14th centuries, first in the language spoken on the Po plain, then in Tuscan, when this dialect established itself as the language of Italy, would give Roland a family tree, a childhood, a youth and all sorts of adventures that had nothing to do with Roncesvalles. Ganelon's betrayal, which in La Chanson de Roland precipitates Roland's death, becomes the culmination of a long enmity between two families, the people of Clermont and those of Mainz. In Roland furieux, in addition to Renaud and Roland, the warrior Bradamante belongs to the valiant Clermont family, while the traitor par excellence, the abominable Pinabel, is a Mayençais.

The two great competing cycles, the Arthurian and the Carolingian, did not enjoy the same fortune in Italy : while the former, read in aristocratic courts, constituted a scholarly literature that would eventually wither away, the latter, whose popular success gave rise to an entire folklore that spread throughout Italy and endured until the last century in the south of the Peninsula : the cantastorie, Neapolitan story singers, in Sicily the Teatro dei Pupi, puppet theaters, finally Andrea da Barberino's chronicle of the Royaux de France, peddled in the countryside, perpetuate and compile the adventures of the Carolingian cycle.

The first Italian epics

There's no doubt that this chivalry for the people initially aroused the contempt of intellectuals. But by the second half of the fifteenth century, the two great cultivated courts of Italy - the Medici court in Florence and the Este court in Ferrara - were interested in the adventures of Orlando and Rinaldo, precisely because of the trivial coloration and popular buffoonery with which the characters were now imbued, and the tales taken from fair to fair. A new kind of epic was born, in which the burlesque vein and parody of the conventional codes of scholarly chivalric literature flourished. In Florence, Luigi Pulci (1432-1484) wrote a Morgante, named after the giant whom Roland is said to have made his squire. /// after triumphing over him. This eight-song epic was published in 23 songs in 1470, then in 28 songs in 1483. In Ferrara, Matteo Maria Boiardo (1441-1494) wrote a Roland amoureux, which he left unfinished at his death. The Roland furieux, while not explicitly presented as a sequel to the Roland amoureux, does indeed recover its characters and stories and bring them to completion. These epics are of national importance for the Italian language: first written in a popular language with no fixed vocabulary or syntax, then reworked, sometimes entirely rewritten (as in Francesco Berni's sixteenth-century translation of Boiardo into Tuscan), they produce and disseminate what is to become classical Italian.

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What essentially links Boiardo and Ariosto is the idea of a Roland in love, an idea of which we find not the slightest trace in the tradition bequeathed by La Chanson de Roland and by Turpin's chronicle, which made Roland a chaste knight inaccessible to feminine charm. Boiardo's and Ariosto's Roland is thus an anti-Roland, a parody of what represented the quintessence of medieval chivalry.

Boiardo's Roland amoureux

In Boiardo's Roland amoureux, the knight Argail and his sister Angélique are sent from Cathay (China) to Paris to seize the two most precious weapons in the world, Roland's sword Durandal and the horse Bayard, which belongs to Renaud. The brother and sister have a diabolical plan, which at first goes very well : all the knights fall in love with Angélique as soon as she appears (I, 1  see the reference edition below in the bibliography)  Argail challenges them to single combat, dangling the promise that whoever wins his sister's hand in marriage will enslave them one by one. But Argail's plan ultimately fails: he, who thought himself invincible, is killed by the Saracen Ferragus (I, 5) and Angélique must flee using her ring of invisibility. In the forest, she unknowingly quenches her thirst at a magical fountain (a source) that makes her fall in love with Renaud at the same time as Renaud quenches his thirst at the antagonistic fountain, which takes away his love for Angélique (I, 9). Angélique has Renaud kidnapped by the magician Maugis (I, 16), but he escapes. Returning to Albraque in Cathay, Angélique finds herself besieged by Sacripant's Tartar troops (II, 6). Astolphe comes to Angélique's aid, but is taken prisoner. Agrican and his Circassian troops then fight Sacripant (II, 7). Just as Agrican wins, Angélique secretly leaves Albraque for the river of oblivion, where the magician Dragontine has locked up a number of valiant warriors. In particular, she has made Roland drink the cup of oblivion, I, 19). By virtue of her magic ring, Angélique brings the knights back to their senses, led by Roland (III, 2). They all stand before Albraque. The general battle is crowned by the duel between Roland and Agrican, interrupted by the night, when the two men's conversation gives rise to a mutual friendship. In the morning, the battle resumes: Agrican, mortally wounded, asks Roland for baptism (III,9). After various adventures, including Roland's disenchantment with Falerine's garden (IV, 6-11), Angélique and Renaud find themselves drinking from each other's fountains (VI, 4-5)  Renaud pursues his love for Angélique, who hates him. Roland returns to France to confront Renaud. King Charles separates them and proposes his arbitration (VI, 6) : he will give Angelique's hand to the champion who has fought best against the infidels. The decisive battle takes place at Montauban.

From Boiardo to Ariosto

Despite the proliferation of parallel narratives, the principle /// The fundamental construction of this epic consists in interweaving the adventures of Roland and those of Renaud, corresponding to the two French cycles that merged as they passed through Italy. Angélique, invented by Boiardo, ensures this articulation. When Ariosto takes up the material of Roland amoureux, this construction and balance are modified. Angélique is no longer the center of the story, the single, common object of all desires. As Renaud fades into the background, Ariosto sets two impossible couples against each other: Roland pursues Angélique, who doesn't love him and eventually marries Médor, a simple Saracen soldier, causing the hero to go mad  in parallel, Renaud's sister Bradamante pursues Roger, who does love her, but is constantly turned away from her by his protector, the magician Atlant, because of the prophecy that once Roger and Bradamante's children are born, Roger is destined to perish under the blows of the Mayençais. Bradamante had already appeared fleetingly at Boiardo's, where she married Roger (VI, 13), only to be immediately separated from him in a fight (VI, 14).

The structural basis is therefore a square: Roland pursues Angélique, who flees him; Bradamante pursues Roger, who escapes her. There is no narrative heart.

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