IV

In the episode of the Tower of Tristan, details of which Spenser borrowed for Britomart's adventures, Ariosto considers the individual who struggles against the oppression of a social institution. By making the focus of the "custom of the castle" a woman, Ariosto finds a way to figure the weakness of even a strong individual. The valorization of Bradamante's acquiescence to unreasonable convention or sheer power is supported by the two major digressions to Bradamante's adventure. These two wings, so to speak, of the Tower of Tristan episode are, first, the story told by the keeper of the castle about the origin of the evil custom, and second, the political prophecies pictured in the castle's gallery.

The founder of the custom of the castle is Clodione, the son of Fieramont—that Pharamond of Shakespeare and French legend who is the supposed founder of French law.^[30] To justify his own conduct, the castellan tells of the arrival once upon a time of Tristan, a stranger, at Clodione's castle. Clodione is a jealous man, who refuses to allow Tristan into his home where he keeps a wary eye on his wife. Angered by this inhospitable gesture, Tristan challenges not just Clodione, but Clodione and his ten knights. Tristan adds the provision that after he defeats the group, its members must lodge outside (OF 32.87). Clodione has enough of a sense of honor that he feels compelled to accept Tristan's challenge ("Clodion, to avoid suffering this humiliation, risked meeting

his death"; "Per non patir quest'onta, va il figliuolo / del re di Francia a rischio de la morte," OF 32.87), but his force and that of his men are insufficient. Tristan defeats everyone and sends the son of the king of France outside for the night.

After he expels Clodione, Tristan suggests that while Clodione is out in the cold, he might want a woman. He teases him for losing, and claims that on the premise that only the brave deserve the fair, Clodione cannot be allowed to have his fair wife. Instead, Tristan offers to send forth a less beautiful woman with whom he had been traveling.^[31] Then, because the story turns on the relativity of insider and outsider, of one who is in a group and one who is a stranger, it is fitting that Tristan tries to show Clodione the ennobling power of love, to suggest that love should lead him so welcome others into his house, not blind him with jealousy. Clodione rejects the offer of the woman, and he fails to learn the lesson of hospitality. From his nocturnal vantage outside in the wind, Clodione feels only the effects of force, not the persuasion of pedagogy. He sees that the strongest knight remains inside the castle. And he listens to Tristan, the exemplar of chivalry, demean a woman who lacks beauty.

Following Tristan's departure, Clodione turns Tristan's taunt into a rule of law. He establishes a new social practice based on Tristan's cavalier attitude toward women. The new custom is that only the strongest knight may stay inside the castle, and only the most beautiful woman. Clodione, then, overturns Tristan's lesson in hospitality by twisting Tristan's mocking threat. As a result Clodione's rules stand symbolically for the original act of injustice, the result of a clash of two sets of values, whose unequal resolution the castle comes to symbolize.

That gendered guidelines represent more than a local example of misogyny becomes clear if we compare Ariosto's episode to its main sources, the customs maintained by Brunor in the prose Tristan and by the son of Galehot le Brun in Gyron le Courtoys . In the first story, with its obvious echoes of the vulgate cycle and Grail story, the custom of the Weeping Castle is said to derive from the days of Joseph of Arimathea,

who converted all of England except for the Isle of the Giant. The ruling giant, named Dialetes, is wounded and unable to resist Joseph's missionaries when they first arrive, but later he struggles to restore paganism. Christianity alienates Dialetes from himself, causing him to do evil.

A later example of the custom of the castle, which Ariosto knew, removes the radical implications of cultural otherness found in the prose Tristan . The theme of honor—of a particularly cloying kind—marks the late thirteenth-century Gyron , a romance whose quality is well below that of the prose Tristan .^[32] In this popular continuation, Gyron approaches a tower called the Passaige Perilleux where he must fight twenty knights and then, if victorious, the lord of the tower. He learns what lies ahead from Sagremor, who sits under a tree, moaning.^[33] Gyron knows at once that, without doubt, this is the passage that Galehot le Brun, an excellent knight, had established. He wonders if he should take on this challenge. Many times he has heard that the perilous passage is one of the greatest adventures in Logres.^[34] He is with Abilan the stranger. On and on they ride. They see the tower. It is fine. They see a stone with red letters. The letters say, "This is the perilous passage, where one knight encounters twenty. Be warned that every knight whom adventure brings here on this road will face this custom before going forward. Four knights will succeed."^[35] It says that the first was Galehot le Brun. Also Danayn le roux. Nothing else appears. Abilan loses, but Gyron wins and meets the lord of the tower, who is the son of Galehot le Brun. For pages and pages, they "regarde" each other.^[36] After an absolutely bloodless battle, a transparent device to establish the honor of each knight, they adjourn for the evening.^[37] The lord of the castle waives the custom for the night, although technically Gyron is his prisoner. In bed, later, with candles burning, Gyron asks how the custom was established.^[38] He is told the story is long, that it will keep him up past midnight, and that he needs his rest. Nonetheless, the narrative proceeds at length. The upshot is that the custom was established because Galehot le Brun ardently loved the wife of Dyodenas. The jealous husband imprisons him, and the lady, who had been unyielding, begins

to soften toward him, because he suffers. She liberates Galehot. She is imprisoned by her husband and guarded by twenty knights. (As Rajna points out, the story of jealousy resembles the tale of Clodione.)^[39] A duel is arranged, to which Galehot must bring a damsel more beautiful than the wife of Dyodenas. He does, and he defeats the twenty knights and kills Dyodenas. Then, to guard his own woman better, Galehot establishes the custom that no stranger can see her at all unless he defeats twenty knights and the keeper of the tower. The source of the custom, then, is to prevent the mayhem that follows the arrival of a stranger who wants one's wife.^[40] Boiardo's version of this story occurs at Castle Cruel, when Marchino burns for Stella, the wife of Grifone of Altaripa.

At the Tower of Tristan and in Ariosto's sources, the story of origins is told to explain the existence of a strange custom. As Dante says in his Convivio , "moral counselings are wont to create a desire to investigate their origins."^[41] Moreover, usage and tradition have the advantage of certainty.^[42] Dante's thought suggests that Ariosto tells the story of Clodione for reasons beyond showing the effects of jealousy. Codification of custom and the legal custodianship of the state arise because the keeper of a castle's customs, as well as other caste inhabitants whose vanity custom serves, seeks stability. The wandering knight errant— Tristan or Gyron in the earlier stories, Bradamante in the Furioso —confronts injustice that has taken the shape of a social institution, a place, a set of rules, a group committed to the game. But stability is not itself an ethical value. It can promote justice or injustice alike. A system of justice, or any set of social codes that seek to govern present behavior by invoking the authority of the past, can oppress an individual, as well as free him or her from fear.