Floridoro: A Chivalric Romance

Renaissance Quarterly, Fall, 2007 by Nathalie Hester

Russell's meticulous introduction gives indispensable biographical information as well as important historical and pseudohistorical contexts for various episodes in the poem, including the anachronistic appearance of Amerigo Vespucci as part of the Italian fleet. Like Finucci with Floridoro, Russell rightly underscores the complex reworking of stock epic female characters, in this case Rosmonda, the sultan's warrior daughter, and her sidekick, Silveria, a follower of Diana, whom she convinces to participate in battle against Christians and later, after her conversion, against the Turks. Despite Russell's explications, we are still left to wonder how to interpret Silveria's getting crushed by an elephant in battle, hardly the usual demise for a warrior-huntress. The "Cast of Main Characters" section and the glossary facilitate keeping track of characters, plots, and geographical locations.

The English prose translation, comprising all but five of the twenty-three cantos, is more functional than lyrical, but duly renders the vividness and intensity of the characters' adventures. The notes are copious and provide key references to the epic tradition, early modern warfare, medieval notions of love, and Renaissance political theory. Russell makes compelling connections between this poem and Lucrezia Marinella's L'Enrico overo Bisantio acquistato (1635) and suggests that Sarrocchi's work may have served as a model of "women's epic" for Marinella. The appendix of excerpts in Italian from four of the twenty-three cantos is a welcome section, although numbering each octave would have made for easier identification and comparison with the English translation. As a whole the volume is impressively rich and comprehensive.

If Fonte and Sarrocchi's poems are firsts, Marie-Madeleine Pioche de La Vergne's Zayde (1670-71) is a last. As Nicholas D. Paige puts it, the work is "the last great French romance" (13). Pioche de La Vergne, better known as Madame de Lafayette (1634-93), has had better luck with posterity than Fonte or Sarrocchi. Despite early questions about authorship, her Princesse de Cleves (1678) quickly brought her to literary fame and firmly entrenched her in the French literary canon as one of the creators of the modern novel. With the present volume, Zayde is now available in English translation for the first time since 1678.

Paige's lively introduction takes the reader into the rapidly evolving world of seventeenth-century French literary prose and convincingly argues that Zayde is both a relic of a faded genre and an innovative pastiche of romance. In this tale of love, betrayal, and mistaken identities set in tenth-century Spain and the Mediterranean, several characters of the Christian and Muslim worlds cross paths, often narrating their own adventures and sorrows before being suitably paired off. The superb translation makes accessible and enjoyable Lafayette's sometimes complex syntax and the idiosyncrasies of her prose. The judicious English rendering of litotes comes through well. For instance, at the conclusion of the story, before the heroine marries her beloved, Paige translates that Zayde "was not unreceptive to the merit of Consalve" (193). The notes are an excellent guide to key terms of the seventeenth-century French literary lexicon, such as inclination, esprit, and humeur.