Performance and Text in the Italian Carolingian Tradition
One of the most fascinating aspects of the chivalric-epic tradition of Italy is the historical dialectic between its manifestations as oral performance and written text. Based primarily on Carolingian lore, the oral and written traditions influenced each other in a symbiotic dialogue across the centuries. John Miles Foley, one of the leading experts on world epic traditions, discusses the interaction of oral and written processes in his book, The Singer of Tales in Performance: "The old model of the Great Divide between orality and literacy has given way in most quarters, pointing toward the accompanying demise of the absolutist dichotomy of performance versus document. . . . Consequently, text can no longer be separated out as something different by species from the oral tradition it records or draws upon; the question becomes not whether but how performance and document speak to one another" (1995:79). The dialectic interaction of oral and written manifestations of Carolingian lore in Italy will be the primary focus of this study. Special attention will be given to 1) the cantari, medieval poems that hail back to the beginnings of the chivalric-epic in Italian literature; and 2) oral performances of epic lore in the Sicilian cunto, which up until the early part of the twentieth century were still part of a living tradition.
The epic tradition in Italy, both oral and written, is primarily based on the French chansons de geste, in particular the Chanson de Roland. Foley asserts that the chansons de geste were originally oral-derived texts: "Behind these manuscript-prisoned epics stands a tradition of oral composition and transmission by singers of tales, called jongleurs, although clerical and scribal activity intervened in various ways between oral performance and written record" (2002:177). With specific reference to the [End Page 68] Oxford manuscript of the Chanson de Roland, he explains that it "derives in some fashion from oral tradition and retains structures and textures typical of oral poetry . . . . We know it only as a manuscript dating from about 1100, but it's without doubt an oral poem" (2002:177-78). Foley, with his extensive scholarship and astute methodology on the subject, lends an authoritative and contemporary voice to the issue. But the belief that the chansons were derived from oral performance is certainly not new. 2
The Cantari
It is believed that stories and songs from France came into Italy in the twelfth century with merchants traveling to northern and central Italy for commerce and pilgrims on their way to Rome, but especially via minstrels and jongleurs, some of whom may have accompanied the other travelers. 3 These stories and songs would include chansons de geste, which were war songs such as the Chanson de Roland; Arthurian romances; and lyric poetry. Important evidence of the popularity of the French chivalric tradition in Italy during this time is provided by one of the most important historical figures, Saint Francis of Assisi (1182-1226), the son of an Italian merchant. Francis was enamored of the chivalric tradition and sang troubadour songs of chivalric deeds in Provençal. His sermons to popular audiences were often in a chivalric register, using the knight's code of honor as a metaphor for leading the Christian life (Cardini 1989; Frugoni 1995).
The French tales began to be written down in Italy, and the form that is of particular interest to this study, the cantare (pl. -i, from the Italian "to sing"), consists of verses in octaves. Cantare refers both to the poem as well as to its internal divisions. The earliest extant manuscripts date from the 1340s. Most likely it was literate cantarini (cantari performers) who wrote down the first cantari, thus most of the standard structural features, discussed below, are performance-derived. French tales, mostly Carolingian [End Page 69] and to some extent Arthurian, were the primary sources of the early cantari. Later, in the fifteenth century, we find...
