Italian Chivalric Epic Poetry and Female Readers

Abstract

The cast found in Italian chivalric epics of weapon-wielding maidens, shape-shifting sorceresses, and magical mentor-advisors drew a vast audience of avid readers throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. In particular, female readers, writers, and performers embraced the creative inspiration for their literary, musical, and theatrical endeavors from such characters as Marfisa, Bradamante, and Alcina from Ariosto’s Orlando furioso (1532), and Clorinda, Erminia, and Armida from Tasso’s Gerusalemme liberata (1581). Participating actively in the ongoing debates regarding the hierarchies of poetic genres, women writers composed chivalric epic poetry on such topics as the mythical founding of cities and dynasties, heroic figures from biblical narratives, and the crusading histories of encounters between the East and the West. Central to women’s reading and writing of Italian epic poetry were concerns raised in the widely debated querelle des femmes, or “the woman question,” that permeated contemporary discourses about women’s social, economic, political, and sexual status. Women’s increased participation in professional performance cultures transformed the fictions of chivalric epic from page to stage. The first Italian actresses produced dramatic repertoires based on episodes from the Furioso and the Liberata. In northern Italian courts, professional women’s singing groups premiered madrigal settings of chivalric characters’ impassioned laments and seductive melodies. From female performers to female composers, Italian epic verse was brought to new life in music and in theater, both in Italy and in Europe.