websites by Jo Ann Cavallo
World Epics (website)
This site is devoted to epics from across the globe, including epic narratives in theatrical dram... more This site is devoted to epics from across the globe, including epic narratives in theatrical dramatizations, puppetry arts, music, art, and film. It aims likewise to showcase websites and teaching resources developed by colleagues that feature both literary and oral epics, from the ancient world to today.
eBOIARDO: Epics of Boiardo and Other Italian Authors: a Resource Database On-line (website)
eBOIARDO is an academic site that I created for my Columbia University courses on the romance epi... more eBOIARDO is an academic site that I created for my Columbia University courses on the romance epic (especially Renaissance Chivalric Epic and Folk Performance Traditions). The main focus is on theatrical, musical, and artistic representations based on Boiardo’s Orlando Innamorato, Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso, and other Italian Renaissance romance epics. The bulk of the videos feature Sicilian puppet theater and the epic Maggio of the Tuscan-Emilian Apennines, including scenes from several plays and some interviews that I filmed between 2001 and the present.
Articles by Jo Ann Cavallo
Athenaeum Review , 2025
This essay aims to offer a snapshot of puppet theater in Sicily today, in particular Palermo and ... more This essay aims to offer a snapshot of puppet theater in Sicily today, in particular Palermo and Catania, with attention to how puppeteers craft their performances for distinct groups of spectators: (1) students from both primary and secondary schools in Sicily; (2) foreign tourists; (3) local residents; (4) international audiences on a large scale; and (5) special groups.
https://athenaeumreview.org/essay/the-resilience-of-sicilian-puppet-theater/
Tirant, 2023
There is an ever-growing number of Digital Humanities initiatives that explore Italian chivalric ... more There is an ever-growing number of Digital Humanities initiatives that explore Italian chivalric literature and its reception in the theatrical and visual arts, from combined digital and print projects that include Italian-language narratives within a panorama of world epics to interactive websites focused on a single epic text. This essay spotlights digital resources that I have found especially fruitful for the study and teaching of Italian chivalric works as well as two websites that I'm in the process of developing and other in-progress digital initiatives that have come to my attention.
Representing Alterity through Puppetry and Performing Objects., 2023
From the perspective of alterity, the predominant figure of the Other in Sicilian puppet theater ... more From the perspective of alterity, the predominant figure of the Other in Sicilian puppet theater is undoubtedly the Saracen (Muslim). As antagonists, Saracens have been associated with different historical aggressors, from North Africans to Ottoman Turks to the House of Bourbon ruling Sicily in the 19th century. However, depictions of Saracens across the source texts, time periods, and puppet theater companies are exceptionally multifaceted. Many non-Christian protagonists were beloved by the traditional opera dei pupi public. A chivalrous Mongol khan, for instance, was affectionately depicted with the characteristic mustache of Vittorio Emanuele II, “il re galantuomo” (the honest gentleman king). And some puppeteers reversed the angle and fostered identification with the Saracen underdogs in the face of oppression coming from elsewhere.
At the same time, the “Paladins of France” cycle, with its more than 300 nightly episodes, is replete with stories that eschew an opposition between an “us” and a “them” and instead underscore our common humanity across borders of all kinds. Camaraderie, friendship, and even romance can readily emerge between individuals from the most disparate corners of the globe—from China to Africa and from Syria to the islands above the Russian landmass—in extended narratives that encourage and promote understanding and peace. In recent decades, moreover, some Sicilian puppeteers have staged plays that thoughtfully challenge collective confrontations and question conventional societal attitudes.
With such boundless material in both traditional and contemporary Sicilian puppet theater, scholars may shine the spotlight on features that either emphasize alterity or embrace diversity. The plays themselves sometimes stage a shift from one perspective to the other, as when an unknown foreign Other becomes a friend, benefactor, or lover. My essay focuses on a selection of examples under the guise of alterity before moving to three principal storylines that celebrate diversity through heterogamous marriages.
https://digitalcommons.lib.uconn.edu/ballinst_alterity/14
Boiardo sconfinato: citazioni epiche, liriche e storiche dalle fonti classiche agli adattamenti novecenteschi. Coedited by Jo Ann Cavallo and Corrado Confalonieri. Special issue of Parole rubate , 2021
This essay examines Giusto Lodico's rewriting of the Orlando innamorato in his monumental prose c... more This essay examines Giusto Lodico's rewriting of the Orlando innamorato in his monumental prose compilation Storia dei paladini di Francia (1858-1860) by focusing on one aspect of this adaptative process – the presentation of three Eastern protagonists invented by Boiardo: Angelica, Gradasso, and Marfisa.This comparative analysis concentrates primarily on questions of gender, genre, and genealogy/geography. Boiardo has been widely credited with celebrating non-Christian heroes more than any other Italian chivalric poet. How does the mid-nineteenth-century Sicilian compiler navigate between remaining faithful to the original poem and conveying his own particular worldview to his contemporary readers?
From Homer’s Odysseus to Boiardo’s Orlando: Heroic models and underlying values in the Italian Renaissance romance epic (link included below)
Classical Inquiries, 2020
AOQU (Achilles Orlando Quixote Ulysses). Rivista di epica, 2020
Although this literary figure is little known today, Morbello/Malaguerra was famous in Sicily and... more Although this literary figure is little known today, Morbello/Malaguerra was famous in Sicily and elsewhere in Italy from the mid-19th to mid-20th century. This essay focuses on his vicissitudes in print (Storia dei paladini di Francia) and on the puppet theater stage, with some attention to the spread of his name and adaptation of his adventures outside Sicily, both in the epic Maggio tradition of northern Italy and in the scripts of a Catanese puppeteer active in New York City. Because Malaguerra repeatedly contests the injustices perpetrated by those in power, his story reminds us that l’opera dei pupi was not simply a chivalric soap opera for the masses before television, but could be a vehicle to express a critical attitude toward the State under the cover of dramatizing medieval and Renaissance epics. Indeed, it may be that puppet theater’s political undercurrent was a factor in its massive popularity both in southern Italy and among Italian immigrants in urban centers of the New World. More generally, the essay aims to contribute to the discussion of political ideologies in the chivalric epic genre, especially in the context of Italian popular culture.
“The Iliad and the Odyssey in the Epic Maggio of the Tuscan-Emilian Apennines.”
Performing Homer: The Voyage of Ulysses from Epic to Opera. Eds. Wendy Heller and Eleonora Stoppi... more Performing Homer: The Voyage of Ulysses from Epic to Opera. Eds. Wendy Heller and Eleonora Stoppino. Routledge, 2019. 105-129.
This essay compares adaptations of the Iliad and the Odyssey in the maggio epico tradition of the Tuscan-Emilian Apennines, showing how the Homeric narrative is refashioned in accordance with the established conventions of the maggio genre as well as how maggio adaptations of even the same source material can be reshaped to transmit vastly different value systems. Since, moreover, during the performance the local audience is not a passive recipient but rather an active participant, the epic maggio thereby becomes a collaborative process aiming to make sense of our lives today even when the stories dramatized date back over two and a half millenia.
Athenaeum Review , 2020
The essay first outlines the principal chivalric narratives that found their way into traditional... more The essay first outlines the principal chivalric narratives that found their way into traditional Sicilian puppet theater, and then turns to how today’s puppeteers are refashioning the stories for contemporary audiences.
(Fall/Winter 2020: 139-153)
“Staging the Liberata’s Female Protagonists in an Apenninic Folk Tradition: Clorinda, Erminia, and Armida in the Tuscan-Emilian Epic Maggio.”
Letteratura cavalleresca italiana , 2019
While Tasso’s epic ostensibly recounts the collective conquest of a hostile alien so- ciety throu... more While Tasso’s epic ostensibly recounts the collective conquest of a hostile alien so- ciety through a military intervention that precludes the peaceful coexistence of diverse creeds and seeks rather the Other’s annihilation, its various love stories depict instead individuals desiring (and even attaining) the most intimate form of physical union with a purported ene- my. When the Gerusalemme Liberata is adapted in the maggio epico genre, a folk opera native to the Tuscan-Emilian Apennines, these opposing tendencies can be seen in the very disparate treatment of Tasso’s three female protagonists. This essay focuses on the portrayal of Clorinda, Erminia, and Armida in six maggio scripts (printed between 1895 and 1985), with attention to the substantially diverse value systems underpinning the variations. Notwithstanding attesta- tions of faithfulness to Tasso’s poem and the maggio tradition, the scripts reveal a living cultur- al space in which the social mores of the participating communities are reinforced or contested.
Textual, Musical, and Theatrical Adaptations of Boiardo’s Orlando Innamorato
Italian Studies, 2019
Boiardo’s Orlando Innamorato has been reimagined through the centuries in prose and verse rewriti... more Boiardo’s Orlando Innamorato has been reimagined through the centuries in prose and verse rewritings, in operatic, melodramatic, theatrical, and cinematic adaptations, and especially in popular traditions such as puppet theatre, epic maggi (folk operas), and recitations by singers and contastorie. This essay offers a diachronic panorama of textual, musical, and theatrical adaptations of Boiardo’s romance epic from the early sixteenth century to the present. Attention is given to both elite and popular culture.
Boiardo, 2018
Introduction to Boiardo [anthology].
Edited by J.A. Cavallo and C. Confalonieri, Milano, Unicopl... more Introduction to Boiardo [anthology].
Edited by J.A. Cavallo and C. Confalonieri, Milano, Unicopli, 2018.
“The Ideological Battle of Roncevaux: The Critique of Political Power from Pulci’s Morgante to Sicilian Puppet Theatre Today.”
In Luigi Pulci in Renaissance Florence and Beyond. Eds. James K. Coleman and Andrea Moudarres. Turnhout: Brepols. , 2017
Many today might not be aware of the fact that traditional Sicilian puppet theatre derives its d... more Many today might not be aware of the fact that traditional Sicilian puppet theatre derives its depiction of the battle of Roncevaux, the climactic episode of a year-long cycle, not from medieval chansons de geste, but from the Morgante maggiore. The scarce attention given to this aspect of the reception of Pulci’s epic may be due not only to a general disconnect between literary critics specializing in Renaissance literature and anthropologists studying folk traditions, but also to the fact that the puppeteers themselves commonly refer to Giusto lo Dico’s mid-nineteenth-century Storia dei paladini di Francia as the source of their entire chivalric repertory. Yet the creative reformulation of the Morgante in Sicilian puppet theatre — via Lo Dico’s selective prose rendering — is of interest not simply for the historical record, but especially for the changes in meaning inherent in each subsequent response to Pulci’s precedent. By focusing on Rinaldo of Montalbano and his interactions with other characters in the Morgante, La storia dei paladini, and the Opera dei pupi tradition, this essay brings to the fore the shifting ideological underpinnings of the Roncevaux episode despite the unaltered arrangement of its principal plot elements. It thus aims to contribute to the discussion of Pulci’s legacy in popular culture and of political subtexts in the chivalric epic genre.
Introduction to twenty essays on literary and historical texts, from medieval to modern Italy, in... more Introduction to twenty essays on literary and historical texts, from medieval to modern Italy, in which authors or characters challenge the established power of the state at the risk of their livelihood or their very lives.
This essay argues that the first novella of Giovanni Sabadino degli Arienti's Porretane asserts t... more This essay argues that the first novella of Giovanni Sabadino degli Arienti's Porretane asserts the individual's right to privacy and underscores the importance of contractual obligations regardless of social status. It offers, moreover, a thinly veiled critique of the military adventurism and rhetorical manipulation of those wielding political power, specifically the pope and the emperor, implicitly pitting the free movement inherent in a market economy against the coercive violence of the political state.
In Speaking Truth to Power from Medieval to Modern Italy, co-editors Jo Ann Cavallo and Carlo Lottieri, Annali d’italianistica 34 (2016): 141-162.
In Marco Polo’s Travels, the market is depicted as a voluntary means of production and exchange, ... more In Marco Polo’s Travels, the market is depicted as a voluntary means of production and exchange, leading to the creation of material abundance and wellbeing, whereas the Mongol state, by contrast, is repeatedly engaged in the extraction of wealth at the point of a sword. This paper examines Polo’s descriptions of the economic and political features of the Mongol empire through the lens of Austrian economics, with particular attention to taxes and tariffs, government spending, predation, state monopolies, currency manipulation, prohibitions and regulations, and control and surveillance.
In Teaching Medieval and Early-Modern Cross Cultural Encounters Across Disciplines and Periods. E... more In Teaching Medieval and Early-Modern Cross Cultural Encounters Across Disciplines and Periods. Eds. Lynn Shutters and Karina Attar. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. 2014. 159-78.
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websites by Jo Ann Cavallo
Articles by Jo Ann Cavallo
https://athenaeumreview.org/essay/the-resilience-of-sicilian-puppet-theater/
At the same time, the “Paladins of France” cycle, with its more than 300 nightly episodes, is replete with stories that eschew an opposition between an “us” and a “them” and instead underscore our common humanity across borders of all kinds. Camaraderie, friendship, and even romance can readily emerge between individuals from the most disparate corners of the globe—from China to Africa and from Syria to the islands above the Russian landmass—in extended narratives that encourage and promote understanding and peace. In recent decades, moreover, some Sicilian puppeteers have staged plays that thoughtfully challenge collective confrontations and question conventional societal attitudes.
With such boundless material in both traditional and contemporary Sicilian puppet theater, scholars may shine the spotlight on features that either emphasize alterity or embrace diversity. The plays themselves sometimes stage a shift from one perspective to the other, as when an unknown foreign Other becomes a friend, benefactor, or lover. My essay focuses on a selection of examples under the guise of alterity before moving to three principal storylines that celebrate diversity through heterogamous marriages.
https://digitalcommons.lib.uconn.edu/ballinst_alterity/14
https://classical-inquiries.chs.harvard.edu/from-homers-odysseus-to-boiardos-orlando-heroic-models-and-underlying-values-in-the-italian-renaissance-romance-epic/
This essay compares adaptations of the Iliad and the Odyssey in the maggio epico tradition of the Tuscan-Emilian Apennines, showing how the Homeric narrative is refashioned in accordance with the established conventions of the maggio genre as well as how maggio adaptations of even the same source material can be reshaped to transmit vastly different value systems. Since, moreover, during the performance the local audience is not a passive recipient but rather an active participant, the epic maggio thereby becomes a collaborative process aiming to make sense of our lives today even when the stories dramatized date back over two and a half millenia.
(Fall/Winter 2020: 139-153)
Edited by J.A. Cavallo and C. Confalonieri, Milano, Unicopli, 2018.
In Speaking Truth to Power from Medieval to Modern Italy, co-editors Jo Ann Cavallo and Carlo Lottieri, Annali d’italianistica 34 (2016): 141-162.