“The Orphan-Hero in Italian Renaissance Epic” investigates a commonplace present in epic poetry from antiquity to the Renaissance: the orphan-hero, a protagonist who grows up without the guidance of biological parents. The study traces this figure from its origins to the early modern period, beginning with classical epic in the introduction and focusing on 16th- and early 17th- century Italian poems in the body of the dissertation, namely Ludovico Ariosto’s Orlando furioso (1532), Torquato Tasso’s Gerusalemme liberata (1581), Tullia d’Aragona’s Il Meschino (1560), Moderata Fonte’s Floridoro (1581), Margherita Sarrocchi’s Scanderbeide (1623), and Lucrezia Marinella’s L’Enrico (1635). Through analysis of these works, I address the following critical questions: 1) What links orphanhood and heroism? 2) Why might poets deem this tradition worthy of continuation? 3) Do modifications to the orphan-hero by different Renaissance authors reveal or emphasize shifts in thinking during the period? In particular, to what extent do the female authors fashion their orphan-heroes to fit an early modern feminist purpose? I propose that the vulnerability inherent in the parentless state is significant to the subsequent development of heroic qualities in Renaissance epic heroes. Authors of epic choose orphanhood for their heroes not only to continue with tradition, which is all-important for the genre, but also to give certain heroes distinctive upbringings and acknowledge the social circumstances of contemporary orphans. I postulate that the prevalence of the orphan-hero in Renaissance epic speaks to a general anxiety about familial legitimacy during the period, a relevant issue in epic given its emphasis on genealogy and family dynasties. Lastly, using a comparative approach between the orphan-heroes of the two canonical male poets under consideration and those of their four lesser-known female counterparts, I elucidate how the female authors envision an alternative role for contemporary women, both inside and outside the family. The female authors modify their characters to give more agency, skill, and independence to women than were supplied by the canonical poets. For the female epic hero, as for the Renaissance female author, proving one’s legitimacy is more difficult and therefore even more crucial.

Italo Calvino’s avowed preference for the Orlando furioso does not preclude him from relying on the Gerusalemme liberata to bolster the epic features of his trilogy I nostri antenati, particularly in the novel Il visconte dimezzato (1952). This article does not establish this intertextual relationship with an eye to exploring how the 16^th-century author has influenced Calvino, but instead follows Lucia Re’s line of thought in her article “Ariosto and Calvino: the Adventures of a Reader” by looking backward to see what Calvino’s novella reveals about Tasso’s poem. Elements of Il visconte dimezzato can indeed serve as an interpretive key to the question of the early modern author’s politico-religious ideology. Calvino parodies epic conflict in the central narrative of his novel by physically splitting his protagonist’s body into a good half and an evil half. Each becomes an autonomous entity, creating a simultaneous halving and doubling effect. After a long rivalry and duel over a peasant woman, Il Gramo and Il Buono combine again to become one re-unified Medardo. This peculiar construction of self versus self emphasizes the fundamental likeness of all peoples regardless of their camp in a conflict. Calvino’s direct citation of Tasso hints that his predecessor may have shared this universalizing view. Tasso appears in a moment both meta- and metà-literary: attempting to further dismember his adversary, Il Gramo accidentally slices in half the book that Il Buono is reading. This is the Gerusalemme liberata, whose halfway point according to its author falls just after the death of the warrior Clorinda. Like Medardo, Clorinda has a double and conflicting nature. Her dual religious, racial, and gender identities have long been the subject of commentary. By halving the Liberata at this point, Calvino suggests that we reconsider our understanding of this character. Ending the poem here would shift the focus from the final duel of Tancredi and Argante in Canto 19 to that of Clorinda and Tancredi in Canto 12. This change assigns much more value to Clorinda; rather than an anomaly, she becomes the foremost representative of the enemy army. If the principal Muslim character is in fact such a complicated figure as Clorinda, who is ultimately redeemed, then the extent to which Tasso frames the Muslims as morally corrupt becomes problematized. Calvino’s portrait of the universal warrior anticipates aspects of more recent critical approaches to Tasso, pointing out that the Liberata’s ethical divide between the army of the saved Christians and that of the condemned Muslims may not be as severe as it appears.