The VM as Outsider Art

[Koen G]

The idea with these pieces of literature that make the "canon" is often that they are innovative, a product of the changing times. I don't know much about Orlando Furioso (it was addressed in a literature course I had at university, but only briefly), but you can just look at the Wiki to see why it is a product of its time:

"In Orlando Furioso, instead of the chivalric ideals which were no longer current in the 16th century, a humanistic conception of man and life is vividly celebrated under the appearance of a fantastical world."

This is one of the main reasons why such works are celebrated. They are not only exceptional in their execution, but they also give us insights in societal changes.

Anyway, my problem is with the terminology. Orlando Furioso is not an example of world building, which is again a phenomenon starting around the 19th century.

Worldbuilding is, according to the Wiki, "the process of constructing a world, originally an imaginary one, sometimes associated with a fictional universe.[1] Developing an imaginary setting with coherent qualities such as a history, geography, and ecology is a key task for many science fiction or fantasy writers.[2] Worldbuilding often involves the creation of geography, a backstory, flora, fauna, inhabitants, technology and often if writing speculative fiction, different races. This may include social customs as well as invented languages for the world."

Orlando Furioso takes place in Europe and Africa. The moon is mentioned as a place where things that are lost on earth, like Orlando's wits, can be found. This sounds more like a trope (your common sense is gone, it must be on the moon) than fantasy writing and worldbuilding. 


I am arguing these points because I am convinced that anachronism won't move us forward. The VM was made in the early 15th century, and even though it may have done something new, it was still a product of its time, not of the 19th century. The genres it references are clearly medieval, with a long and established history. The handwriting in the marginalia is medieval, the dress of the figures is medieval, the vellum is medieval.

If we want to ever understand the manuscript, we must look at the context of the early 15th century. I understand that we will still need to argue that something "new" or unusual happened. But this new thing came from a mind which, as I believe all evidence suggests, was still medieval. It will probably help us more to look at this medieval setting, rather than project 19th century genres onto it.