Despite Its Longstanding Associations with the Pleasures of Reading And

02-cleaver_0Syrimis 7/8/13 2:58 PM Page 37 HUMANISM ’S OTHER INHERITANCE : T HE BRUTAL INTERTEXTUALITY OF BOIARDO ’S ROCCA CRUDELE NATALIE CLEAVER Summary : In Book I of the Orlando innamorato , Ranaldo travels from Palazo Zoioso to Rocca Crudele, a distinct adventure that exists almost as a separate novella within the poem. At Rocca Crudele, he encounters an exceptionally violent scene that is composed of the most horrific moments of cruelty drawn from classical and vernacular literature. The intertextual referents of Rocca Crudele are completely stripped of anything redeeming, leaving only atrocities as the poem confronts the problem of the imitation of past evils instead of virtues. This paper argues that Rocca Crudele is a place set apart in the world of the Innamorato , where its normally reveren - tial and humanist approach to the past fails temporarily. Rocca Crudele refuses interpretation as a site of pragmatic or moral instruction and instead reflects upon the potential perils of imitation as a pattern of behav - ior when the cultural legacy of the past is not always exemplary. Despite its longstanding associations with the pleasures of reading and the poetry of escape, the Italian romance epic is no stranger to the violence and cruelty of war. Yet few moments in renaissance poetry can rival the unflinchingly gruesome description of the events at Rocca Crudele in Book I of Matteo Maria Boiardo’s Orlando innamorato . In addition to its demon - ic monster, fearsome giants, and walls draped with human limbs, this tale within the poem layers infanticide upon betrayal, torture upon revenge, cannibalism upon ritual sacrifice, and necrophilia upon rape. Rocca Crudele is a virtual museum of horrors that should be all the more aston - ishing given the stubborn persistence of Boiardo’s reputation as a light - hearted and whimsical poet. 1 The excessive violence of Rocca Crudele stands out among other romance epics of the Renaissance, but it is also remarkable within the 1 In his introduction to the Innamorato , Aldo Scaglione opens by praising Boiardo’s “facili muse e spirito sereno” (9). More recently, in a volume on the Este court, Dennis Looney writes: “Boiardo does not allude to the Phaethon story in his vast narrative, Orlando innamorato , for the world of his poem is sim - ply too bright to allow such darkness into it” (“Ferrarese” 4). Quaderni d’italianistica , Volume XXXIV, No. 1, 2013, 35-63 02-cleaver_0Syrimis 7/8/13 2:58 PM Page 38 NATALIE CLEAVER world of the Innamorato . No other scene in the poem is comparably dis - turbing or graphic; it seems to revel in adding detail after gory detail. This violence is particularly at odds with Boiardo’s address to his audience in the poem’s opening octave: “Signori e cavallier che ve adunati / Per odir cose dilettose e nove, / Stati attenti e quïeti, ed ascoltati / La bella istoria che ‘l mio canto muove” (i.1). 2 Ranaldo’s adventures at Rocca Crudele are nei - ther delightful, nor particularly novel, except perhaps in aggregate, and the brutality is especially surprising in a poem that does, after all, claim to sing the pleasures of love. The peculiarity of this bleak scene is increased by the fact that it stands alone like a distinct novella within the poem. Its unusually graphic layer - ing of violence seems to have no moral, aesthetic, or narrative connection with the rest of the poem, as the episode begins and ends with complete destruction. Yet the Innamorato practically starts with this story, and its presence so early in the poem demands some explanation. The few schol - ars who have written in detail about Rocca Crudele have argued that it rep - resents the “foreign and exotic horrors” of Herodotus (Murrin), the nega - tive exemplarity of poor governance, as part of Boiardo’s larger didactic project for the Estense rulers (Cavallo), and a humanist lesson in the moral imagination and universal ethics derived from an encounter with a foreign “other” (Ross). 3 While all of these scholarly treatments of the Innamorato are engaging readings of the poem, I will argue that the encounter at Rocca Crudele has nothing either usefully instructive or exotically foreign about it. Instead, I understand it as a humanist reflection on the problem presented by imita - tion when that which is imitated is negative and non-exemplary behavior – a confrontation between a perspective that generally considers both his - tory and literature to be moral and pragmatic instruments of instruction and the darkest, most violent moments of the past. 4 Without rejecting the 2 Citations of the Innamorato are from Bruscagli’s edition. All quotations are from Book I; references are therefore to canto and stanza. A final bibliography of all translations and editions of primary sources cited is included at the end. 3 Francesca Battera’s “Boiardo tragico?” is also dedicated to an analysis of Rocca Crudele, but despite its title, the article focuses primarily on Boiardo’s relation - ship to magic, which lies outside of my scope here. 4 “For humanist historiography…the past is seen as a reservoir of models for pre - sent action. Past and present are linked through a relationship of simili - tude…The words, deeds, and even the bodies of the illustrious ancients were seen as signs of excellence and patterns for behavior. Without them, and with - out the theory of history as repetition, the very notion of a cultural rebirth or re- — 38 — 02-cleaver_0Syrimis 7/8/13 2:58 PM Page 39 HUMANISM ’S OTHER INHERITANCE authority or vitality of the past as a model for present behavior in his poem as a whole, Boiardo offers at Rocca Crudele an unorthodox meditation on imitation as a habit that operates almost involuntarily regardless of the quality of the thing imitated. Rocca Crudele is a limited moment of recog - nition within the Innamorato that the literary inheritance carries both the good and the ill of the past with it. The events at Rocca Crudele are based on a brutal and unforgiving intertextuality that takes the most gruesome details from the tragic tradi - tion of Euripides, Sophocles, and Aeschylus, from the histories of Herodotus, and from the epics of Rome, including the Aeneid , the Pharsalia , and the Metamorphoses , layering these horrors one on top of the other, building them into a single elaborate and unredeemable narrative, that is unreadable in a moral or pragmatic terms. Far from reflecting a fear - ful “otherness,” the basis for Rocca Crudele is distilled from the founda - tional classics of the European literary tradition. For Boiardo, this inheri - tance is part of an unbroken pattern of imitation from the classical world to the Renaissance, as the events at Rocca Crudele equally assimilate ver - nacular literature, including the Arthurian tradition, Dante, and Boccaccio. The castle serves as an isolated space in which the darkness of the literary tradition can be examined critically, a space where the poem can dwell on the problem of inherited evils without the danger of conta - minating its larger narrative. Within the walls of Rocca Crudele, Boiardo confronts the traumas of the past and their effects on the present. The pattern of intertextuality at Rocca Crudele is exceptional not so much for the number of sources from which Boiardo draws his material as for the unusually bleak use he makes of them. Here, the poet strips his sources of everything positive, of that which might justify or contextualize its violence—of anything that might allow this intertextual past to be understood as exemplary—leaving his reader with a scene that clearly cannot support a moralizing or productive reading. Yet the result is still an act of imitation; Rocca Crudele does not offer a solution to the problem of the non-exemplary past, so much as a containment of its horrors. It reflects a skepticism about the humanist inheritance that recognizes that not all of the past is useful, and it repre - naissance is unthinkable. The early Renaissance is imbued with a somewhat anx - ious reverence toward the classical world. It understands the priority of antiqui - ty to be ontological as well as historical: ancient poetry, political life, and phi - losophy are seen to be sources of value – moral, martial, linguistic, which moder - nity must appropriate through the hermeneutic motion of a leap across centuries of perceived darkness toward a past light” (Hampton 8-9). — 39 — 02-cleaver_0Syrimis 7/8/13 2:58 PM Page 40 NATALIE CLEAVER sents an underlying threat that the evils of history and literature will resur - face unbidden. For this reason, the episode is framed by two moments of absolute destruction and separated from the rest of the poem by a failure of epic and romance narrative strategies at both its beginning and the end, failures that mark it as a particularly problematic site of reading. 5 The bru - tal intertextuality on which the castle is constructed represents a temporary allowance for the worst to emerge from the past, suggesting that if the problem of involuntary imitation cannot be resolved, it can at least be iso - lated, much as the monster of Rocca Crudele is contained in his prison. Despite the characteristically loose structure of Boiardo’s poem, 6 the early events of the first book are generally focused on the court of Charlemagne and the pending war with Gradasso, and it seems fair to say that the Innamorato begins in the world of epic. In the first major romance deviation of the poem, Ranaldo arrives at Arden Wood, where he unwit - tingly drinks from the fountain of Merlin. Its water transforms Ranaldo’s passion for Angelica into hatred, and releases him from her pursuit.

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