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The Saracens in Italian Epic Poetry

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

William Wistar Comfort
William Wistar Comfort*
Affiliation:
Haverford College
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Extract

The Saracens in Italian popular literature are exotic. They are of French origin and came with the French epic into Italy, where this epic material found a second fatherland. For the Franco-Italian versions which served as a connecting link between the French poems and the court epics of Pulci, Boiardo, Ariosto, Ciecco da Ferrara, Tasso and the rest, one may consult the magistral work of Pio Rajna Le fonti dell' Orlando Furioso (Firenze, 1876), the same author's Ricerche intorno ai Reali di Francia (Bologna, 1872), and the Introduction of Johannes Hübscher's edition of “Orlando” in Stengel's Ausgaben und Abhandlungen. No. lx, (Marburg, 1886). The following works may also be profitably consulted: F. Castets, Recherches sur les rapports des chansons de geste et de l‘épopée chevaleresque italienne. (Paris, 1887); Vincenzo Crescini, “Orlando nella chanson de Roland i nei poemi del Bojardo e dell’ Ariosto,” Il Propugnatore, xiii, Pt. 1, 2 (Bologna, 1880).

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 59 , Issue 4-Part1 , December 1944 , pp. 882 - 910
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1944

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References

1 Cf. Nouvelles Recherches sur l'Entrée d'Espagne (Paris, 1882), and his edition of the poem mentioned above.

2 PMLA, lv, 628–659.

3 Castets, Recherches, pp. 40–41.

4 Ricerche, pp. 313–314.

5 P. Rajna, “Le Origini dell'Epopea Francese,” Firenze, 1884, p. 132.

6 Ricerche, p. 263.

7 Ibid., pp. 288–289.

8 F. Casters, op. cit.

9 Stengel's Ausgaben und Abhandlungen, lx (Marburg, 1886).

10 The name Morgant was borne by several prominent Saracens in the French epic poems. Cf. E. Langlois, Table, p. 471–472.

11 Cf. French Mainel in Romania, iv, 305–337.

12 In another poem Malagigi claims to have seen Rodomonte in torment in Hell (Astolfo innamorato, canto viii.)

13 About 1820 Shelley read this poem in Italy. (Cf. U. Mengin, L'Italie des Romantiques (Paris, 1902), p. 229.)

14 Rerum italicarum Scriptores.

15 For the manners of presentation in Naples about 1880, one may consult Marc Monnier: Les Contes populaires en Italie (Paris, 1880), pp. 77–81.