Encountering Saracens in Italian Chivalric Epic and Folk Performance Traditions

Abstract

My principal field of research and teaching, the medieval and Renaissance romance epic, includes countless examples of cross-cultural relations, especially encounters (friendly and amorous as well as bellicose) between European Christians and “Saracens” from Spain, North Africa, the Middle East, and East Asia.¹ The course discussed in this essay, “The Renaissance Chivalric Epic and Folk Performance Traditions,” which I have taught at Columbia University at both the undergraduate and graduate level, has presented a particular set of challenges and opportunities for cross-cultural work. In investigating how popular theatrical traditions—primarily, Sicilian puppet theater (Opera dei pupi) and the epic Maggio of the Tuscan-Emilian Apennines—have refashioned centuries-old chivalric narratives, my students and I examine the varying treatment of foreign characters across distinct art forms, in different time periods, and among local performance communities operating concurrently. In this essay, I first draw attention to the practical and methodological obstacles, strategies, and resources related to this course.² I then consider more closely a chivalric episode that held particular interest for students due to its iconoclastic refashioning by some Sicilian puppeteers: the amorous encounter between the East Asian princess Angelica and the North African foot soldier Medoro based on Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso.