Jane E. Everson. The Italian Romance Epic in the Age of Humanism: the Matter of Italy and the World of Rome.

Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2001. xvi + 386 pp. $74. illus, bibl. index. ISBN: 0-19-816015-1.

Jane E. Everson's thoroughly researched scholarly survey on the romance epic in Italy from the fourteenth to the sixteenth centuries is divided into four parts. In part 1, where the aims and the objectives of the study are outlined, Everson states that in the coexistence of the chivalric epic and the classical revival, both of which saw their development and major flowering in Italy during the same period of time, there seems to be a "paradox," which is "intellectually very challenging and stimulating, but which normally passes unobserved" (3). According to Everson, the first to speak of such a paradox was Ruggero Ruggieri who, in his L'umanesimo cavalleresco italiano (Napoli: Conte, 1977), suggests the thesis, without however documenting it in detail, of the romance epic as a kind of parallel literary form to classical humanism. It is Everson's intention, instead, to conduct a "full scale textual analysis" of the works of the major writers of the period, examined in their cultural context, in order to demonstrate the existence "of a syncretist culture interfused on each side with elements of the other" (6), that is, there is no paradox in this parallel development.

Parts 2-3 constitute the central part of the book. Part 2, "Texts and Contexts," is composed of four chapters in which the author deals with the prehistory of the romance epic in Italy and briefly points out the seminal impact that the Chanson de Roland and the chansons de geste had on Franco-Venetian and Franco-Tuscan cantari. Also discussed are the fascination and popularity of Arthurian literature on fourteenth-century poets and public. Everson emphasizes the presence and significance of a continuing tradition in Italy of epic in Latin as well as the concept of imitatio, focusing her discussion on Virgil's Aeneid, Statius' The baid, Lucan's Pharsalia, and Ovid's Metamorphoses, works which, together with those by Livy, Sallust, and Homer, can be considered as "possible source models" (90) of authors of romance epics and which most probably provided the groundwork for Petrarch's Africa and Boccaccio's Teseida.

After a discussion of the gradual emergence of the ottava rima as the exclusive form of the epic genre, Everson turns her attention to Pulci, Boiardo, and Cieco da Ferrara, who began their work when humanist culture had been the prevailing culture in Italy for more than fifty years. Everson asserts that Luigi Pulci, though he was not as well-versed in classical studies as Boiardo, nevertheless--because of his acquaintance with Florentine litterati--"does reflect in the Morgante elements of classical culture" (123). With regard to Boiardo, whose humanist credentials no one doubts, what remains to be analyzed is "the nature of his imitation, the extent to which in the Innamorato is 'modern' [....] or 'medieval'" (125). As to Cieco, because of his association with humanists at the courts of Mantua and Ferrara, Everson recognizes in his Mambriano the "incorporation of an eclectic range of classical motifs" (126). In the last chapter of part 2, Everson points out the growing fortune of the romance epic in the cultural milieu of the second half of the Quattrocento.

Part 3, "New Perspectives, New Readings," comprises three chapters. Everson discusses the presence, significance, and impact of the themes of love and war (personified as Venus and Mars), as well as questions concerning dynastic matters, in Teseida, Morgante, Orlando Innamorato, and Mambriano. In the second chapter Everson treats the figure of the hero and the role this character plays in the plot of specific narrative poems in order "to examine the extent to which the poems under discussion attempt to draw on the classical model of the hero and incorporate it into the poem as a means of elevating the genre and providing for a revival of classical epic but in the vernacular" (223). The last chapter of part 3, "Constructing the Plot," is dedicated to a stimulating discussion of the narrative structure of the poems examined in order to assess whether or not, or to what extent, a poem can be classified as epic.

In part 4 of her book, which serves as conclusion and has as its heading "The Paradoxical Success of the Romance Epic: Ariosto and Beyond," Everson affirms that there is "no case for continuing to separate critical discussion of the culture of Humanism and the development of the classical revival from the simultaneous development of the vernacular epic" (327). The works considered demonstrate, in fact, "a constantly varied process of fusion, syncretism, and eclecticism, fusion of the classic into one or more levels of the vernacular text and the eclectic approach to classical sources and models" (328). With regard to the Furioso, which she analyzes adopting the same methodology and debating the same issues faced in her previous discussion of Boccaccio's, Pulci's, Boiardo's, and Cieco's works, Everson concludes her study stating that the development and success of the romance epic in Renaissance Italy must be ascribed to "the challenge of the cultural environment of Humanism, and the intrinsic syncretism of the genre, its fluidity and open-endedness, which allowed modifications to be absorbed and implemented gradually and in differing mixtures according to the particular time and context" (353).

Whereas this reviewer shares Everson's general thesis, he cannot fully agree with Everson's evaluation of Pulci's knowledge of the classics and the actual impact that Florentine humanism had on his cultural formation and on his masterpiece. In fact, notwithstanding Pulci's attempts not to seem out of place in the learned circles of his native city, the author of the Morgante had little or no significant interest in philological studies and did not share with his contemporaries the cult of forms and preoccupation with elegance of expression that are so much a part of Italian humanism. To Professor Everson's extensive bibliography, one should add Paolo Orvieto's seminal study Pulci medievale (Roma: Salerno Editrice, 1978) in which the Italian critic emphasizes the medieval matrix of the Morgante. Despite these minor reservations, Jane Everson's book, the result of several years of study and research, constitutes a significant, stimulating, and valuable contribution to our understanding of Italian romance epic in the age of humanism.

EDOARDO A. LEBANO

Indiana University