The African king, Agolante, has invaded Italy from Sicily. Charlemagne moves south to challenge him and is victorious. With the blessing of the Pope, he founds the kingdom of Sicily and Apulia, the achievements of the Normans in south Italy being thereby attributed to the Franks. King Agolante is accompanied by his son, Almonte, who is slain by Orlando. Charlemagne, who is by now Orlando’s uncle, had considered the boy Orlando too young to accompany the army and had instructed him to remain behind. Fortunately for the outcome, Orlando disobeyed and was able to save the Christians by his intervention at a critical moment. By this victory he comes into possession of Almonte’s helmet, and of his sword, Durindana (Durendal in the Chanson), said to have belonged to Hector.2

The existence of manuscript copies of such stories in Italy testifies to their popularity there. In particular, St Mark’s Library in Venice has a notable collection of texts in Franco-Veneto. It was the convention that such narratives should be recited in French; this created an impression of authenticity and verisimilitude. The language naturally reveals the local origins of the authors. The Entrée d’Espagne, for instance, an important item in the collection, is written in Franco-Paduan. The Prise de Pampelune is by a Veronese, probably the same Nicola of Verona who wrote an adaptation of Lucan’s Pharsalia. His name is hidden in an acrostic. Both authors exhibit some coyness about writing works they know will be distorted by cantastorie. The diffusion of such stories in French was prevalent in the north of Italy in the early part of the fourteenth century. Adaptations began to be composed in Tuscan in the following century. In the Laurentian Library in Florence there is a manuscript of a poem in octaves, entitled Orlando, in which the hero’s –adventures receive extensive development. This work was to be an important source of material for the Florentine poet, Luigi Pulci, in his composition of Morgante.

An even more important source was the Italian prose vulgate of Carolingian legends, compiled by Andrea da Barberino, himself a cantastorie, who lived between 1370 and 1433. His work, entitled I Reali di Francia (The Royal House of France), is in the form of a chronicle. Animating it is a unifying concept which goes a long way towards explaining the dynamic power which the Carolingian stories exerted over Italian audiences. Charlemagne and his Twelve Peers, with their ancient genealogies, are the instruments whereby God has chosen to ensure the diffusion of the Christian faith throughout the world; they are the champions of the Church of Rome, for which Rome itself was founded, as Dante himself believed.

There is the authority of tradition, therefore, behind the combination of gravity and fabulous romance which is the feature of the three most important literary examples of the Italian romantic epic, Luigi Pulci’s Morgante, Matteo Boiardo’s Orlando Innamorato and Ludovico Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso.1 Thus it was that Pulci could set himself both to entertain the court of the Medici with his racy octaves and to please the devout mother of Lorenzo the Magnificent, Lucrezia Tornabuoni, who, it is said, asked him to undertake the work. He tells again the story of Roland at Roncevaux but, like the author of the poem in the Laurentian Library, he sends him off first on fabulous adventures in the Levant, where he captures Babylon. The poem was popularly christened Morgante, after the giant of that name whom Orlando converts and baptizes. Amid the rollicking exuberance of this work there are some serious and solemn touches. The creation of two characters entitles Pulci to consideration as an artist of original genius: the devil Astarotte, a great and proud devil, still trailing clouds of angelic glory, who may have contributed something to Milton’s Satan; and a second, smaller giant, Margutte, a prototype of Rabelais’ Panurge, a strongly delineated villain, perhaps a caricature of a real person, a glutton, drunkard, liar, thief and blasphemer. His enunciation of his creed in terms of food is among Pulci’s many verbal tours de force.2

Pulci also provides an interesting glimpse of Orlando’s potential instability. At the beginning of the story, enraged by Gano’s (Ganelon’s) deceit and Charlemagne’s credulousness, he rushes home to make arrangements for his departure. Out of his wits with fury, he mistakes his wife, Alda, for Gano and attacks her with his sword. Here is the seed of Orlando’s madness which develops ultimately into a towering Titanic frenzy in Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso.

The introduction of women and the influence of love is perhaps the most radical alteration in the Roland legend in its transition from chanson de geste to romance. ‘La belle Aude’ and the regret expressed by Oliver that Roland will never lie in her arms are the only concession in the original Chanson to the softer emotions.