Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 9, 2025
The respectable giant Morgante dies of the bite of a crab, as if to spew on what trivial chances depends the life of the strongest.
For here indeed were gates leading to a land of delectation: the country of the giant Morgante, the enchanted island of Avillion, the court of the Soldan and the King's palace at Camelot. In this region Odo spent many blissful hours.
Luigi Pulci obviously imitates the Improvisatori in his 'Morgante, and both his poetry and Boiardo's are in part, at least, a half-conscious parody of the chivalrous poetry of the Middle Ages. Under the name of Limerno Pitocco, he composed the 'Orlandino, in which chivalry appears only as a ludicrous setting for a crowd of modern figures and ideas.
The want both of good love-episodes and of descriptions of external nature, in the Morgante, is remarkable; for Pulci's tenderness of heart is constantly manifest, and he describes himself as being almost absorbed in his woods. That he understood love well in all its force and delicacy is apparent from a passage connected with this pavilion.
It is alternately burlesque and serious, and it abounds with passages of great pathos and beauty. It was, however, remodeled by Berni, sixty years after the death of the author, and from the variety and novelty of the adventures, the richness of its descriptions, the interest excited by its hero, and the honor rendered to the female sex, it excels the Morgante.
1 This, incidentally, is another misstatement. Valentinois had with him, besides the thousand foot levied by the Pope and the hundred lances under Morgante Baglioni, an army some thousands strong led for him by Yves d'Allegre. Guicciardini's aim is, of course, to shock you; he considers it necessary to maintain in Cesare the character of ravenous wolf which he had bestowed upon him.
These pleasant spaces, which Odo had to himself save when the canonesses walked there to recite their rosary, he peopled with the knights and ladies of the novelle, and the fantastic beings of Pulci's epic: there walked the Fay Morgana, Regulus the loyal knight, the giant Morgante, Trajan the just Emperor and the proud figure of King Conrad; so that, escaping thither from the after-dinner dullness of the tapestry parlour, the boy seemed to pass from the most oppressive solitude to a world of warmth and fellowship.
Meanwhile, he imported his movables from Venice, hired a suite of rooms in the Guiccioli palace, executed his marvellously close translation of Pulci's Morgante Maggiore, wrote his version of the story of Francesca of Rimini, and received visits from his old friend Bankes and from Sir Humphrey Davy.
"Yes," said Morgante, "thanks to you, your God shall henceforth be my God. Tell me your name, and afterwards dispose of me as you will." And he told him that he was Orlando. But Fortune stands watching in secret to baffle our designs.
And so conversing, they went together towards the abbey; and by the way Orlando talked with Morgante of the dead giants, and sought to comfort him, saying they had done the monks a thousand injuries, and "our Scripture says the good shall be rewarded and the evil punished, and we must submit to the will of God.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking