Teaching the Italian Renaissance Romance Epic ed. by Jo Ann Cavallo (review)

This is an ambitious collection of essays, forty-fourth in the MLA series for teaching specific texts or genres. The volume consists of thirty essays, grouped thematically, plus an introduction, summary of resources, and lengthy bibliography. Chapter topics include Franco-Italian and Italian medieval antecedents (Leslie Zarker Morgan, Maria Bendinelli Predelli); early editions (Giovanna Rizzarelli); readily available modern editions, English translations, and other resources (Marco Dorigatti, Joshua Reid, Jo Ann Cavallo); international reception of the three ‘Ferrarese Crowns’—Boiardo, Ariosto, and Tasso (Charles S. Ross, Phillip John Usher, Patricia E. Grieve); other Renaissance Italian authors of romance epic, such as Pulci and Folengo (Andrea Moudarres, Stefano Gulizia); and reworked and original epics by sixteenth-century Italian women poets (Julia L. Hairston, John C. McLucas, Julia M. Kisacky, Maria Galli Stampino). Contributors bring their specialized interests to bear on the genre and offer diverse pedagogical approaches. Gael Montgomery traces the transformation of Angelica from Boiardo’s incomplete poem to Ariosto’s continuation. Walter Stephens and Bryan Brazeau focus on specific Renaissance topoi (magic, monsters, the Earthly Paradise). Janet Levarie Smarr considers Orlando furioso under the rubric of ‘Madness in Renaissance Drama’ (pp. 118–27). Karina F. Attar offers a fine survey of Italian literary representations of Muslims. Moving beyond pure literature, several essays survey this genre’s impact on the visual arts (Chris Picicci, Morten Steen Hansen); madrigals (Grant Herreid, Barbara Russano Hanning); theater and performance (Evelyn Birge Vitz, Roberto Puggioni); modern retellings and comics (Stefano Nicosia); and even gaming theory in a course for non-literature majors (Andrea Privitera).

Among such a crowded field of essays, some unevenness is inevitable. Contributors include scholars of all ranks, from ABD and lecturers to distinguished professors and emeriti. Contributions range in length from six to fifteen pages. Essays also vary in their use of endnotes. Some helpfully offer detailed content notes (Stephens, Levarie Smarr, Galli Stampino) or suggest readings and available sources (Zarker Morgan, Picicci), whereas other essays have only a single note or none at all. The Hansen article dedicated to visual arts would have benefitted from weblinks to images discussed, especially since many of this book’s readers will not be art historians. Similarly, the Herreid piece includes musical examples in score form, which may be incomprehensible to many instructors of literature, but only one CD is noted. There are several recordings of Monteverdi’s Combattimento di Tancredi e Clorinda, if not of the other madrigals discussed. By contrast, Hanning’s excellent musicological essay provides lyrics only, without musical transcription, and then glosses the details of text setting in layperson’s terms.

Space does not permit detailed discussion of each contribution, but I would like to mention two that are strikingly original. Susan Gaylard employs materiality theory to analyze the role of ‘status objects’ (armor, swords, clothing) and performance in the construction of knightly identity. The strategies informed by the humanistic education of the nobleman and adopted by historical Italian Renaissance courts—notably idealized by Castiglione—are critiqued by Ariosto: ‘The Furioso’s continual emphasis on the representation of identity and status through material objects throws into relief Ruggiero’s failed education as a worthy knight . . . which is framed through the impossibility of reading appearances’ (pp. 131–2). Gaylard extends her analysis to the literal ‘materiality of the poem’s early editions’ [which offer] ‘further insights into the representation and questioning of political power’ (p. 132). An equally provocative chapter by Stephen P. McCormick considers the notion of travel as depicted by Italian authors from Marco Polo to Boiardo and Ariosto. He acknowledges the expanding awareness of lands beyond the Mediterranean as a result of historical mercantilism. His essay furnishes ‘key examples of cartographic production between roughly 1350 and 1540’ as analogues which illuminate ‘many of the geographic references in Italian epic and provide a powerful visual...