Orlando Furioso in Milton: Heroic flights and true heroines

Comparative Literature, Spring 1997 by James H Sims

Milton must surely be given more credit for a discerning reading of Orlando Furioso than Hughes allows when he says, "Neither Homer's epics, nor The Aeneid, nor any other epic poem has ever exemplified the spiritual heroism that is Milton's theme" (379, note on PL 9.40-41). It cannot have been less discoverable to Milton than to some perceptive modern critics that Ariosto, underneath and alongside his narrator's famous ironic detachment, seriously treats human moral virtue heroically developing, under the divine eye of Providence, in such characters as Bradamante and Ruggiero, Orlando and Rinaldo, Astolfo and Isabella.8 The spiritual heroism of Adam and Eve, especially Eve after the Fall, is anticipated, for example, by that of Bradamante and Ruggiero. Though Ruggiero's character develops slowly, falteringly, and never quite fully, Bradamante's virtuous character is fairly constant throughout the poem (obscured briefly by her unfounded but understandable jealousy in Canto 30), and both achieve heroic stature through a self-sacrificing love that anticipates Eve's willingness to sacrifice herself for Adam, taking all the blame to herself, and her initiation of their mutual repentance. Ariosto's fledgling Christian Isabella, who gives up her life rather than betray Zerbino's love by breaking her vow to die a virgin (Canto 29), provides an even closer parallel, as her double canonization, one by Ariosto's paean of praise and another by Rodomonte's erection of a chapel to honor her and her lover (Canto 29), suggests.

At least three Miltonic themes gain depth and breadth from the Ariostan presence in Milton's epics. The first of these is that selfgratifying pursuit of female beauty by the male, or manipulative use of that beauty by a woman for selfish ends, degrades human dignity. Orlando's obsessive pursuit of Angelica, based more on selfish pride than on love, leads to violent bestiality (Cantos 23-24) until his sanity is providentially restored (Canto 38); Angelica's full realization as a person comes only when she ceases to center her love in herself and falls totally in love with Medoro (Canto 19) . In Paradise Lost (11) Michael's foreview to Adam of his posterity shows the deleterious effects on humanity of male philandering and female coquetry; and in Paradise Regained (2), Satan's rejection of sexual attraction as a temptation for Jesus makes clear the unworthiness, even from Satan's point of view, of selfishly pursuing female beauty or being susceptible to its manipulative charms.

A second theme is that, since both sexes share equally in intelligence, will, and the capacity for self-discipline, the same standards of ethical and moral conduct apply to men and women alike. Ariosto's story of Ginevra condemns the double standard that holds the alleged adulteress guilty and leaves the adulterer unpunished (Cantos 4-6), and the aged man who hears the host's story of Giocondo and Astolfo defends women as no more nor less inclined to incontinence than their husbands (Cantos 27-28); so Adam and Eve are both held culpable in the Fall with no greater blame falling on Eve for succumbing to the temptation of Satan than on Adam for sinning deliberately to avoid separation from Eve (PL 9-10).