CHAPTER VII.

PULCI AND BOIARDO.

The Romantic Epic-Its Plebeian Origin-The Popular Poet's Standpoint -The Pulci Family-The Carolingian Cycle-Turpin-Chanson de Roland-Historical Basis-Growth of the Myth of Roland-Causes of its Popularity in Italy-Burlesque Elements-The Morgante Maggiore-Adventures in Paynimry-Roncesvalles-Episodes introduced by the Poet-Sources in older Poems-The Treason of Gano -Pulci's Characters-His Artistic Purpose-His Levity and Humour -Margutte-Astarotte-Pulci's bourgeois Spirit-Boiardo-His Life -Feudalism in Italy-Boiardo's Humour-His Enthusiasm for Knighthood-His Relation to Renaissance Art-Plot of the Orlando Innamorato-Angelica-Mechanism of the Poem-Creation of Characters-Orlando and Rinaldo-Ruggiero-Lesser Heroes-The Women-Love-Friendship-Courtesy-Orlando and Agricane at Albracca-Natural Delineation of Passions-Speed of Narration—Style of Versification-Classical and Medieval Legends-The Punishment of Rinaldo-The Tale of Narcissus-Treatment of MythologyTreatment of Magic-Fate of the Orlando Innamorato.

LORENZO DE' MEDICI and Angelo Poliziano reunited the two currents of Italian literature, plebeian and cultivated, by giving the form of refined art to popular lyrics of divers kinds, to the rustic idyll, and to the sacred drama. Another member of the Medicean circle, Luigi Pulci, aided the same work of restoration by taking up the rude tales of the Cantori da Piazza and producing the first romantic poem of the Re

naissance.

Of all the numerous forms of literature, three seem to have been specially adapted to the Italians of this period. They were the Novella, the Romantic Epic,

and the Idyll. With regard to the Novella and the Idyll, it is enough in this place to say that we may reckon them indigenous to modern Italy. They suited the temper of the people and the age; the Novella furnishing the fit artistic vehicle for Italian realism and objectivity; the Idyll presenting a point of contact with the literature of antiquity, and ex pressing that calm sensibility to natural beauty which was so marked a feature of the national character amid the distractions of the sixteenth century. The Idyll and the Novella formed, moreover, the most precious portion of Boccaccio's legacy.

Concerning the Romantic Epic it is necessary to speak at greater length. At first sight the material of the Carolingian Cycle, which formed the basis of the most considerable narrative poems of the Renaissance, seems uncongenial to the Italians. Feudalism had never taken a firm hold on the country. Chivalry was more a pastime of the upper classes, more consciously artificial than it had been in France or even England. The interest of the Italians in the Crusades was rather commercial than religious, and the people were not stirred to their centre by the impulse to recover the Holy Sepulchre. The enthusiasm of piety which animated the Northern myth of Charlemagne, was not characteristic of the race that earlier than the rest of Europe had indulged in speculative scepticism and sarcastic raillery; nor were the marvels of the legend congenial to their positive and practical imagination, turned ever to the beauties of the plastic arts. Charlemagne, again, was not a national hero. It seemed as though the great foreign epics, which had been trans

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ported into Italy during the thirteenth century, would find no permanent place in Southern literature after the close of the fourteenth. The cultivated classes in their eagerness to discover and appropriate the ancient authors lost sight of peer and paladin. Even Boccaccio alluded contemptuously to chivalrous romance, as fit reading only for idle women; and when he attempted an epical poem in octave stanzas, he chose a tale of ancient Greece. Still in spite of these apparent drawbacks, in spite of learned scorn and polished indifference, the Carolingian Cycle had taken a firm hold upon the popular fancy. We have seen how a special class of literary craftsmen reproduced its principal episodes in prose and verse for the multitudes gathered on the squares to hear their recitations, or for readers in the workshop and the country farm. Now, in the renascence of the native literature, poets of the highest rank were destined to receive the same material from the people and to give it a form appropriate to their own culture. This fact must not be forgotten by the student of Pulci, Boiardo, Berni, and Ariosto. The romantic epics of the golden age had a plebeian origin; and the masters of verse who devoted their best energies to that brilliant series of poems, were dealing with legends which had taken shape in the imagination of the people, before they applied their own inventive faculties to the task of beautifying them with art unrivalled for splendour and variety of fancy. This, and this alone, explains the anomalies of the Italian romantic epic-the mixture of burlesque with seriousness, the irony and sarcasm alternating with gravity and pathos, the wealth of

comic episodes, the interweaving of extraneous incidents, the antithesis between the professed importance of the subject-matter and the spirit of the poet who plays with it as though he felt its puerility-all the startling contrasts, in a word, which have made this glittering Harlequin of art in the Renaissance so puzzling to modern critics. If we remember that the poets of the sixteenth century adopted their subjects from the people, finding them already impregnated with the plebeian instincts of improvisatori, who felt no real sympathy with knighthood, and whose one aim was to amuse and gratify an audience eager for excitement; if we further recollect that these poets approached their own task in the same spirit, adding yet another element of irony proper to men who stood aloof and laughed, and who desired to entertain the Courts of Italy with masterpieces of humour and fantastic beauty; we shall succeed in comprehending the peculiarities of their productions.

The romances of Orlando must be regarded as works of pure art, wrought by courtly singers from a previously existing popular literature, which in its turn had been fashioned from the Frankish legends to suit the tastes of a non-chivalrous, but humorous and marvel-loving multitude. In passing from the Song of Roland or Turpin's Chronicle to the Orlando Furioso we can trace two separate processes of transmutation. By the earlier process the materia di Francia was adapted to the Italian people; by the second the new material thus obtained was reconstructed for the Italian Courts. The final product is a masterpiece of refined art, retaining something of the French

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originals, something of the popular Italian rifacimento, but superadding the wisdom, the irony, and the poetry of one of the world's brightest geniuses. We might compare the growth of a romantic epic of the sixteenth century to the art of Calimala, whereby the rough stuffs of Flanders were wrought at Florence into finer cloths, and the finished fabric was tinted with the choicest dyes, and made fit for a king's chamber.

Hitherto I have spoken as though Pulci, Boiardo, Ariosto, Berni, and the lesser writers of romantic epics could be classed together in one sentence. The justification of so broad a treatment at the outset lies in this, that their relation to the popular romances they rehandled was substantially the same. But it will be the special purpose of the following pages to point out their essential differences, not only as poets, but also with regard to the spirit in which they viewed their common subject-matter.

Boccaccio, in his desire to fuse the classic and the medieval modes of thought and style, not merely adapted the periods of Latin to Italian prose, but also sought to treat an antique subject in the popular measure of the octave stanza. His Teseide is a narrative poem in which the Greek hero plays a prominent part, while all the chiefs of Theban and Athenian legend are brought upon the scene. Yet the main motive is a tale of love, and the language is as modern as need be. Writing to please the mistress of his heart, and emulous of epic fame, Boccaccio rejected the usual apostrophes and envoys of the Cantori da Banca, and constructed a poem divided into books. Poliziano approached the problem of fusing the antique and