letsreadmatteroffrance

[letsreadmatteroffrance]

Let's read Orlando Innamorato Book I Canto i Stanzas 1-33

Hello ladies and gents and welcome to the first installment of "Let's read Orlando Innamorato." More specifically, the Parlor Press translation.

I'm not really one for fancy introductions so let's just dive right in and I'll let my writing speak for itself.

So we open with book I canto i of Innamorato with the note that this was translated from the "True Chronicle of Turpin, Archbishop of Reims, by his Excellency Count Matteo Maria Boiardo, Count of Scandiano, for the Illustrious Lord Ercole, Duke of Ferrara."

Those of you who read Song of Roland will recognize Turpin as the awesome sword-swinging holy man who told Roland & Oliver to stop their bickering so that Roland could blow the horn so that Charlemagne could avenge their deaths.

Oh and by the way, "Orlando" is the same guy as Roland from Song of Roland. Apparently it's his italian name.

It also describes a few things that will happen throughout the Canto, but I'll just skip it to avoid redundancy.

The poem begins addressing us, "lords and knights" to"hear things new, things of delight." Boiardo says that we shall hear some really awesome shit that Orlando did for love during Charlemagne's reign as Emperor. Orlando seems to be the type to do anything for love, but unlike Meatloaf he WOULD in fact do that. It also says that Orlando is just like other men in that Love conquers him too. Boiardo also claims that Turpin kept this story hidden because he didn't want to embarrass Orlando, but since Turpin has been long since dead face down in a river holding his own innards, we're gonna find out anyway.

Turpin's history claims that somewhere "in the Orient past India" was a king so motherfucking rich and powerful that he basically did whatever the hell he wanted and that said "dragon-hearted sovereign" was Gradasso. Gradasso's your typical "all he wants is the one thing he can't have" kinda guy, only he wants two things. More specifically he wants Orlando's sword Durindal and Orlando's cousin Ranaldo's Horse Bayard, who was seriously OP as fuck as I think we'll see later. 

And since no wealth could ever buy the sword or the horse, he decided it'd be a good idea to go to war with France for them.He picked out 150,000 of his best troops, but instead he planned to challenge ol' King Charley to single combat to "conquer and destroy all the sun sees, all see surrounds." Don't know if he means that metaphorically or literally, but either way you have to admire his ambition. 

Next Boiardo shifts our perspective from Gradasso and his crew setting sail to France, where Charles the Great getting stuff together for his tournament on Pentecost. Kights and people from all over the place Christian and Saracen alike showing up because Charlemagne promised safety to anyone not an apostate or renegade. So I guess in other words, he cares more about people getting his own faith wrong rather than those of another faith entirely. Either way it's pretty nice of him considering what era this is. Boiardo lists a few Spanish (and likely Saracen) nobles gathered for the feast, the apparently serpent-faced Grandonio, the Falcon-eyed Feragu, King Balugant ("King Charles's kin" how I guess we'll find out), and Isolier with Serpentin, whatever that means. He also promises to tell us a few more once we reach the joust. 

On the day of the tournament King Charlie invites to his table each baron and knight of noble birth. He must've had one bigass table, because the poem says he numbered 22,030 men. The poem goes on for a couple of stanzas about how everybody sits, but I'll spare you the filler other than that Ranaldo doesn't take kindly to how honored the Maganza family and Gano in particular were. If you remember Song of Roland, you'd remember he has good reason to be pissed considering Ganelon/Gano was halfway responsible for having thousands of Charlemagne's troops dead along with Roland/Orlando and the other twelve peers (I say halfway because Roland deserves credit for being too much of a stubborn, arrogant Jackass to call for help when he had the chance like Oliver told him to BUT THAT'S ANOTHER RANT FOR ANOTHER DAY). 

The poem goes on a bit describing how pimptastic and shiny the event was and that Charlemagne and his peers all turned their noses up to the pagans when all the sudden HOLY SHIT FOUR HUGE GIANTS. Said giants happened to be escorting a single lady and a single knight. Said lady was so bangin' that Orlando's wife Alda, ladies Galerana, Clarice, Ermelina, and others that Boiardo won't recount couldn't hold a candle to her, and that everyone immediately turned their heads to her direction.

Said mystery lady was all "Yo, my name's Angelica, and this knight here is my bro Uberto. We heard you guys were hardcore so we came to party with you.My brother's a pretty cool guy..Eh beats up Christians and pagans alike and doesn't afraid of anything. If you wanna prove you're awesome you can fight him outside town at Merlin's stone by the Pine Tree Fountain in the green field. But you only get one shot, once he knocks you off the horse, you can't try again. Do not pass go, do not collect $200, go directly to jail. But if any of you can beat my bro, you can have me as a wife."

Orlando was particularly eager to try his hand at it, but feels ashamed at his sin and the irony that all the world couldn't beat him but yet he's conquered by an unarmed woman.

Pretty much everyone thought she was hot though; from Charlemagne, to old Duke Namo, to Feraguto who had to stop himself three times from carrying her off and getting pummeled by the giants.

And I'm afraid that's all the time I have for tonight, but I hope you enjoyed the first installment of Let's Read Orlando Innamorato.

But even if you didn't hopefully I'll do better in the next post sometime between tomorrow and next week.

[letsreadmatteroffrance]

So yeah, that'd be this blog here.

Welcome ladies & gents, and let's start our first foray into the matters of france in the form of Orlando Innamorato by  Matteo Maria Boiardo, the first chapter of which I'll begin writing my reactions to shortly.

Strap yourselves in, because this is going to be a long ride.

Introducing an ongoing project to my followers

Hi followers!

How many of you like medieval chilavalric romances with knights ‘n shit?

A lot I’m guessing. 

How many of you have heard of Song of Roland?

A few, I suppose. Maybe you had to read it for a class or something.

Now how many of you have heard of The Matter of France, which is a series of medieval literature set during a fantasy version of the time of Charlemagne comparable to King Arthur?

…

I thought as much.

That’s why I’m going to spread awareness of the two most famous and acclaimed entries of the cycle through two new liveblogging projects:

Let’s read Orlando Innamorato

and

Let’s read Orlando Furioso

And I’m going to do it at a new sideblog:

http://letsreadmatteroffrance.tumblr.com/

GO THERE NOW.

Ideally there will be updates at least once a week with one chapter (or chapter equivalent) per week. Because I’m a masochist and school simply hasn’t given me enough shit to do already.

Of course this is going to take me quite a while

BECAUSE THIS SHIT IS THICK

Why am I doing this?

To put it simply if this stuff is supposed to be equivalent to Arthurian legend (indeed, in France & Italy it’s more well known than King Arthur), then I feel more people should know about it here in the States.

Or at the very least, two very notable characters from the Orlando duology: 

Bradamante & Marfisa, two warrior ladies so obscure that not only are their wikipedia pages criminially short, google image search reveals little relevant results for either of them.

Both these chicks were described in Ben Thompson’s Badass: the Birth of a legend, (the same guy behind badassoftheweek.com), which is where I first heard of them.

Story goes that during Charlemagne’s wars with the Saracens (a fancy antiquated term for Muslim, despite them being depicted as polytheists- it was the middle ages, the crusaders didn’t particuarly care that much about accuracy), Charlemagne’s niece was Bradamante, a powerful female knight al a Joan of Arc proved that love can in fact bloom on the battlefield when she met her equal in the form of the Saracen warrior Ruggiero, said to be a descendant of Alexander the Great & Hector of Troy. They fell head over heals for each other, but they sadly parted ways because they felt that since they were on opposing sides things wouldn’t work out.

Not long after that Bradamante stumbled upon the sorceress Melissa who told her that Ruggiero had gotten captured and locked up by a wizard and that this would be her chance to get together with her beloved.

So in other words, you have a female knight rescuing a dude in distress.

That might not sound too impressive to some of you considering the ever-increasing amount of strong female characters these days but keep in mind that

1. This was written between the late 1400’s and early 1500’s, long before the majority of female empowerment movements and

2. This is just the START of her adventures, she’s got a loooooooong journey ahead of her considering that she loses Ruggiero again almost immediately after since he had the bright idea of taking the wizard’s Hippogriff for a joyride and flew off to God knows where. 

(side note: it’s also the first physical appearance of a hippogriff in literature anywhere. It was described in Virgil’s writings, but this was the first time it was actually used as a character. At least one person points out it also serves as a symbol of Bradamante & Ruggiero’s impossible love.)

Bradamante then spends the rest of her story cracking the skulls of everyone who gets in her way to reuniting with Ruggiero.

The other warrior girl is Marfisa, Ruggiero’s long lost twin sister, thought neither of them find out until pretty far in, making her the luke to Ruggiero’s Leia and Bradamante’s Han Solo.

Abandoned at birth and raised by Lionesses in the North African desert, she later got sold into slavery to an Arab King. One night the King tried to rape her. Her response? 

She killed him, killed his whole family, took control of her palace guard, and took control of his whole kingdom. 

And she did all of that, followed by conquering seven neighboring kingdoms all before she reached the age of 18.She’s also credited with being undefeated in over a thousand duels, so she’s not somebody you want to fuck with.

You’d think with tumblr’s obsession with female characters, these two would be all over the place, and yet in obscurity they remain.

Well I’m gonna hopefully change that.

I already read the summary of the events in Bulfinch’s Mythology, but I was disappointed in how only half of the events described by Mr. Thompson in his book even happened, so with little other option than to read the unabridged editions.

And I’m doing it so you all won’t have to.

So if you’re interested, go follow the blog above and maybe I’ll have something up later tonight.