| Abstrakt: |
This essay argues for a reconsideration of the critical consensus about epic and romance modes and their interrelation in Ariosto's Orlando furioso. According to ancient authorities, Astyanax dies in the sack of Troy, but his recovery in later literary traditions provides the originary model of the youthful romance survivor in the Furioso. I read two interlaced episodes from Ariosto's poem in detail, the night raid and the homicidal women, and consider the ways in which romance functions as a strategy to recover characters and stories from the limits of epic expectation in each episode. The handsome young foot soldier Medoro survives a near-fatal wound through the help of a caretaker, Angelica, and his recovery is a specific revision of the expectations of the night raid, a set piece in the epic tradition in which the central character always dies. Medoro is paired with another handsome romance youth, Guidone Selvaggio, who survives what appears to be certain exile or death in Alessandria to be reunited with his extended family of Christian knights. The critical privileging of closure in interpretations of the Furioso fails to recognize the impulse to survival that characterizes both the romance mode and the early modern project of humanism, which recovers texts that are damaged and languishing—not, like the visual or plastic arts, "reborn." Finally, I argue that romance's impulse to continuation and survival serves as a force of permanent opposition to both epic narrative closure and the corresponding project of consolidating political power. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] |
