Fantasy and Chivalry in High and Low Culture

Chivalric romance was the most successful form of narrative poetry in early-modern Italy. It was in high demand in both popular and elite contexts, in princely courts as well as in the piazza, and it gave birth to some of the most famous literary works of Renaissance Italy, such as Luigi Pulci’s Morgante, Matteo Maria Boiardo’s Orlando Innamorato and Ludovico Ariosto’s Orlando furioso. Although chivalric poetry was circulated and accessed in the form of oral performances as much as of written (and printed) books, it is usually the latter aspect that gains substantial critical attention, while the former albeit acknowledged, is overlooked. This chapter aims to analyse this genre more comprehensively and to shed new light on the many facets of a literary production that prospered across the boundaries between low and high, oral and written, medieval and Renaissance cultures – so much as to suggest a reconsideration of their definition. First, it investigates the continuity between the chivalric poems of the 15th -16th centuries and the long-lasting tradition of cantari in ottava rima that were brought to success since the 14 th century by singers of tales called canterini or cantimpanca, who spread this genre all over Tuscany and in the northern and southern courts by performing their own and other authors’ poems in front of very mixed audiences, both in public and in semi-private contexts; the chapter shows how their texts relied upon popular culture and medieval epics and folklore as well as interacting with the works of very influential writers, such as Boccaccio, and how they circulated both orally and in manuscript form, reaching in some cases (like the Spagna in rima) a remarkable length and complexity. The core of this chapter examines how, between the late 15 th and the early 16 th century, chivalric poetry evolved thanks to some more cultivated and highly skilled authors who set new standards for the following generations. The themes and techniques of the three greatest writers (Pulci, Boiardo and Ariosto) are therefore largely discussed, but space is also reserved to less-known figures who show remarkable original features and/or enjoyed a considerable sales success. The interactions between orality and writing, their evolution, and their importance at all levels, including that of the main authors, are crucial also to this section. On the one hand, it discusses how chivalric romance, with titles old and new, became soon after the invention of print one of the prominent genres in the nascent book market and how, on the other hand, this did not mark the end of its oral diffusion, since cantimpanca were instead directly involved in publishing and selling books. Hence, part of the chapter focuses on poets-improvisers such as the Florentine Altissimo, who both performed their compositions and published and sold them, and on charlatan-publishers such as the Ferrarese-Venetian Zoppino, one of the greatest booksellers of the early 16th century and also a pioneer producer of illustrated editions of chivalric texts that in the following decades strongly contributed to the wide success of this peculiar genre of Italian narrative poetry all over Europe.