From Emperor to Pawn: Charlemagne in the Orlando Furioso

In Ludovico Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso (1516, 1521, 1532), Charlemagne is mentioned in the very first stanza of the poem (line 8) and gives the historical background to the poem’s matter. The carolingian context of the poem’s paladins has always been given for granted and related to the matter of arms as opposed to the connection between the matter of Britain and loves: therefore, Charlemagne’s name is chiefly associated to the most epic and official moments in the narrative – he takes action to solve the contest between Orlando and Rinaldo (1.7), giving birth to the narrative machine of the poem, prays the Christian God before the battle (14.69), fights valorously at the siege of Paris (15-16) and celebrates Ruggiero and Bradamante’s nuptials (46.101). However, things prove much more complicated and Charlemagne’s character much more nuanced than expected in Orlando Furioso: mentioned nearly 200 times, Charlemagne represents the epic side of the poem – with all its symbolic implications in terms of power, religion, military deeds and past values, but also embeds the contradiction between epic and romance, in terms of both narrative and ideology, to the extent that his image and role can be ridiculed in the following Cinque Canti. The Cinque Canti, telling the disintegration of Charlemagne’s army and therefore the crisis of the chivalric world as a whole, conclude with Charlemagne falling into the water of the Moldau river under the bridge of Prague, where he is preparing for the final battle against the Saracens. This article aims to explore the various meanings that Charlemagne assumes in Ariosto’s poem, including his onomastic coincidence with the raising emperor Charles V in Orlando Furioso and the demythologizing of the king’s role in the Cinque Canti.