Orlando
I read the Song of Roland a while back. It's an interesting story, and worth a read. It has some fun bits of heroism set out against a starkly racist background - or to be more honest, it's more about culture than race. Though the image of Roland at the pass is very impressive, it's a bit undercut by the insistence that the Saracens are devil-worshippers, hated in the sight of God, all that.
Then I read Orlando Furioso. And let me tell you something: the Italians have it all over the French when it comes to their Charlemagne romances.
It's become one of my favorites, really; it and Orlando Innamorato, to be perfectly honest. I was lucky enough to get a good translation of Furioso in which the translator decided against replicating the poetic form and instead turned it into prose in order to best do justice to the word choices Ariosto made. Eventually, I wound up getting a copy of Innamorato, and was worried that it wouldn't compare. And it's not quite as good - but that by no means implies it's not good. It is.
One of the things I like about the Orlando epics is that they're actually kind of progressive. Sure, you get virtuous virgins and wicked temptresses, but there's this basic love that suffuses the works. Bradamante is allowed to kick copious amounts of ass; Marfisa even more so. Heck, add to this that Marfisa is Saracen, a chaste princess turned warrior knight who winds up fighting on the side of Charlemagne because she is a virtuous pagan. There is the inevitable conversion at the end, but really it's pretty much a footnote; where Song of Roland emphasized the battle between religion, the Orlando works are about characters.
And oh God, the characters. "Saracens" are not, as a whole, portrayed as terrifying bogeymen as much as "the other guys." Rodomonte, on the other hand, makes Darth Vader look like a whiny schoolboy. (Picture me saying this before the prequels had come out for maximum effect.) The guy is a motherfucking Exalted: he runs around at top speed in full armor, leaping from battlement to battlement, slaying entire armies. He is fiery and unlucky in love, the kind of antagonist game masters dream of creating. Orlando spends much of the later poem driven nuts as a result of this wonderful building toward a breaking point - so sure his lady is pure, so sure she loves him best, ever in denial until he finds her secret sex-hideaway where she and her beau have written their plights of troth all over the walls. He's the best warrior Charlemagne has got, and as a heartbroken berserker he's a force of nature.
Of course, then there's Ruggiero. Having beaten a sorcerer-knight, Ruggiero is running around with a shield that is magic. It reflects light such that it stuns one's opponent, and so wearing it one is matchless in jousts. He covers up its reflective surface with a cloth, but after a few tilts the cloth start getting ripped up and it starts functioning. Ruggiero doesn't notice at first, he just wins some more. Then he later finds out that he's won the last few fights because the shield has made him invincible. Now you probably know what the average player character would do: invincible magic weapon, right? Not Ruggiero. Stricken by the thought that his own prowess is in question by winning in such a way, he ties the invincible magic shield to a heavy stone and throws the fucker down a well. Now that is a badass.
And then there's Astolfo. I wouldn't have a blood elf paladin alt on World of Warcraft if not for Astolfo. The English knight is just fantastic: one part brave and faultless, one part comedically short-sighted. He also gets to be epically heroic as well as a source of comedy. Perhaps the best example is when he flies a hippogriff to the moon - you heard me - where he discovers, among other wonders, great portions of men's wits that have gone otherwise missing, in the care of Saint John. (He's looking for Orlando's, you see, which are entirely missing at this point.) Astolfo muses a bit at how surprising it is that such great portions of wits are to be found on the moon and not in men's heads, from men that he knows by reputation. And he does get Orlando's wits back - but bless him, he also has the presence of mind to look for his own name. "He held to his nose the phial containing his wits and they just seemed to make their way back into place. Turpin asserts, it seems, that from there on Astolfo lived sensibly for a long time, until a subsequent caprice of his cost him his wits a second time." If you wonder why it is that I might devote a little time to a blood elf that is one part fearless hero and one part Bertie Wooster, blame Ariosto.
[Edit: I misremembered. Astolfo does not actually fly a hippogriff to the moon. He flies it to the summit of the mountain of Terrestrial Paradise, where he borrows the flaming chariot of Elijah and flies that to the moon. Apologies for my exaggeration.]
There's a reason I never got into Pendragon, I think; I never really went for the romance of the classically miserable, of courtly love that is only at its finest when people are in love with other people they can't have. I like swords and armor and quests and all that, but it wasn't until Orlando that I realized that the Italians basically agreed with me. Poignant love tragedies are all well and good, but there's something I find a bit more inspirational about a story where the hero and the heroine kick ass, and the moralizing is witty and tongue-in-cheek.
(Well, the part about the man forced to fight ten knights in one day and then "service" their ten widows at night, and if he's potent enough to achieve both, then he's allowed to keep his life - I'm not sure there's a moral there. Except maybe "Never make Stamina your dump stat.")
Then I read Orlando Furioso. And let me tell you something: the Italians have it all over the French when it comes to their Charlemagne romances.
It's become one of my favorites, really; it and Orlando Innamorato, to be perfectly honest. I was lucky enough to get a good translation of Furioso in which the translator decided against replicating the poetic form and instead turned it into prose in order to best do justice to the word choices Ariosto made. Eventually, I wound up getting a copy of Innamorato, and was worried that it wouldn't compare. And it's not quite as good - but that by no means implies it's not good. It is.
One of the things I like about the Orlando epics is that they're actually kind of progressive. Sure, you get virtuous virgins and wicked temptresses, but there's this basic love that suffuses the works. Bradamante is allowed to kick copious amounts of ass; Marfisa even more so. Heck, add to this that Marfisa is Saracen, a chaste princess turned warrior knight who winds up fighting on the side of Charlemagne because she is a virtuous pagan. There is the inevitable conversion at the end, but really it's pretty much a footnote; where Song of Roland emphasized the battle between religion, the Orlando works are about characters.
And oh God, the characters. "Saracens" are not, as a whole, portrayed as terrifying bogeymen as much as "the other guys." Rodomonte, on the other hand, makes Darth Vader look like a whiny schoolboy. (Picture me saying this before the prequels had come out for maximum effect.) The guy is a motherfucking Exalted: he runs around at top speed in full armor, leaping from battlement to battlement, slaying entire armies. He is fiery and unlucky in love, the kind of antagonist game masters dream of creating. Orlando spends much of the later poem driven nuts as a result of this wonderful building toward a breaking point - so sure his lady is pure, so sure she loves him best, ever in denial until he finds her secret sex-hideaway where she and her beau have written their plights of troth all over the walls. He's the best warrior Charlemagne has got, and as a heartbroken berserker he's a force of nature.
Of course, then there's Ruggiero. Having beaten a sorcerer-knight, Ruggiero is running around with a shield that is magic. It reflects light such that it stuns one's opponent, and so wearing it one is matchless in jousts. He covers up its reflective surface with a cloth, but after a few tilts the cloth start getting ripped up and it starts functioning. Ruggiero doesn't notice at first, he just wins some more. Then he later finds out that he's won the last few fights because the shield has made him invincible. Now you probably know what the average player character would do: invincible magic weapon, right? Not Ruggiero. Stricken by the thought that his own prowess is in question by winning in such a way, he ties the invincible magic shield to a heavy stone and throws the fucker down a well. Now that is a badass.
And then there's Astolfo. I wouldn't have a blood elf paladin alt on World of Warcraft if not for Astolfo. The English knight is just fantastic: one part brave and faultless, one part comedically short-sighted. He also gets to be epically heroic as well as a source of comedy. Perhaps the best example is when he flies a hippogriff to the moon - you heard me - where he discovers, among other wonders, great portions of men's wits that have gone otherwise missing, in the care of Saint John. (He's looking for Orlando's, you see, which are entirely missing at this point.) Astolfo muses a bit at how surprising it is that such great portions of wits are to be found on the moon and not in men's heads, from men that he knows by reputation. And he does get Orlando's wits back - but bless him, he also has the presence of mind to look for his own name. "He held to his nose the phial containing his wits and they just seemed to make their way back into place. Turpin asserts, it seems, that from there on Astolfo lived sensibly for a long time, until a subsequent caprice of his cost him his wits a second time." If you wonder why it is that I might devote a little time to a blood elf that is one part fearless hero and one part Bertie Wooster, blame Ariosto.
[Edit: I misremembered. Astolfo does not actually fly a hippogriff to the moon. He flies it to the summit of the mountain of Terrestrial Paradise, where he borrows the flaming chariot of Elijah and flies that to the moon. Apologies for my exaggeration.]
There's a reason I never got into Pendragon, I think; I never really went for the romance of the classically miserable, of courtly love that is only at its finest when people are in love with other people they can't have. I like swords and armor and quests and all that, but it wasn't until Orlando that I realized that the Italians basically agreed with me. Poignant love tragedies are all well and good, but there's something I find a bit more inspirational about a story where the hero and the heroine kick ass, and the moralizing is witty and tongue-in-cheek.
(Well, the part about the man forced to fight ten knights in one day and then "service" their ten widows at night, and if he's potent enough to achieve both, then he's allowed to keep his life - I'm not sure there's a moral there. Except maybe "Never make Stamina your dump stat.")