Orlando Furioso in Milton: Heroic flights and true heroines

Comparative Literature, Spring 1997 by James H Sims

EDITORS OF Milton's biblical epics have long noted most of his allusions to Ariosto's romance, Orlando Furioso. How such allusions work within Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained to indicate Milton's positive responses to major characters and events in Orlando Furioso has not, however, been seriously considered. The most thoroughly annotated modern editions of Milton's epicsthose by Merritt Hughes and Alastair Fowler-repeat Ariostan echoes noted by earlier editors, some without comment, others interpreted as ironically intended.1 Editors have generally assessed allusions to Ariosto in Milton's epics as obligatory nods by the English poet in the direction of a popular predecessor in Renaissance epic. Yet the strategic placement of some oft-cited "ironic" allusions to Orlando Furioso in Milton's epics suggests that Milton was not simply interested in reminding readers of Ariosto's romance epic in order to denigrate it in favor of his own religious poem.2

Some of Milton's allusions to Ariosto have gone undetected, others have been noticed but left relatively unexplored, and still others have been dismissed as the stuff of an epic writer's traditional boast to have outdone all who wrote before him.3 In the latter category is the standard editorial emphasis on irony in Milton's Englishing of Ariosto's famous Cosa non detta in prosa mai ne in rima (1.2.2): "Things unattempted yet in Prose or Rhyme" (PL 1.16).4

Commenting that Milton here "ironically paraphrases Ariosto's opening," Hughes offers "the reason why": "Milton declares his religious theme to be unlike that of any previous epic poem" because all have celebrated "Battles feign'd" and "Knights / At Joust and Tournament [and] marshall'd Feast" (notes to PL 1.16 and 9.27-41). Fowler comments that Milton "parodies Ariosto's claim to originality,"5 thus suggesting both that Milton takes Ariosto's line as a serious claim and that he belittles it in comparison with his own "advent'rous Song." Given the obvious fact that Orlando Furioso continues the basic plot and most of the characters of Orlando Innamorato, however, Milton would neither have understood Ariosto as claiming absolute originality nor have made such a claim about his own poem. What was unattempted before Ariosto was to show the prudent Orlando driven mad by love, and what Milton attempts is the first use of the epic form to make a Christian God's ways appear just to men. Ariosto's central theme is indicated by his title and opening lines:

Diro d'Orlando in un medesmo tratto cosa non detta in prosa mai ne in rima: che per amor venne in furore e matto, d'uom che si saggio era stimato prima.

And of Orlando I will also tell Things unattempted yet in prose or rhyme, Of the mad frenzy that for love befell One who so wise was held in former time.

And he hopes that, as a muse, his beloved

me ne sara pero tanto concesso, che mi basti a finir quanto ho promesso.

(1.2.1-4,7-8)

Will grant me now sufficient for my task: The wit to reach the end is all I ask.

(Reynolds)

Milton's theme of man's disobedience overcome by the obedience of the greater man is, he says, his

adventurous Song,

That with no middle flight intends to soar Above the Aonian Mount, while it pursues Things unattempted yet in Prose or Rhyme.

Furthermore, instructed by the Spirit-Muse,

to the highth of this great Argument I may assert Eternal Providence And justify the ways of God to men.

(PL 1.13-16,24-26)

In immediate context, Ariosto's cosa non detta concerns the irrational love-frenzy of the formerly self-controlled Orlando and his ultimate restoration to sanity through divine intervention. Within the first four stanzas, however, Ariosto's "things unattempted" have broadened from the Orlando-Angelica love plot to include the Charlemagne-Agramante martial plot (both plots continuing character development and action beyond Boiardo's) and the allencompassing prophetic plot of Ruggiero-Bradamante, founders of the Este line and exemplars for all human beings who aspire to serve both their own generation and posterity. Thus, viewed from the perspective of a new kind of narrator, even the familiar is transformed into the new.6

Similarly, Milton's "things unattempted" include not only the story of human failure and loss, but also the fall of the rebel angels, the creation of a new universe, and the providential restoration of fallen man through heroic human virtue; all these plots are expanded from earlier narrations by wondrous inventions of character, event, and dialogue, and all are narrated by a supernaturally illumined and uplifted mortal voice. As Ariosto's readers are challenged at the outset to determine in what sense the poet's story of almost-too-familiar characters and events can be new, Milton's readers must also initially ask with David Daiches, "Unattempted even in the Bible? . . . unattempted in English literature?"7

In part Ariosto challenges us to reread Boiardo in the light of his poem, as Milton challenges us to become fitter readers of the Bible, and of earlier epics, through reading his epics. Perhaps, too, Milton echoes Ariosto in order to provoke readers to reread Orlando Furioso in particular in order to join that "fit audience" sought by the muse of Paradise Lost (7.31) .