Ariosto and Boiardo : the origins of Orlando furioso
Abstract
In remarkably intensified form the fortunes of Orlando Furioso repeat the history common to the group of which it is really a very uncommon member. It was immediately and indisputably the poem of its age, challenged only by Gerusalemme Liberala, and then only after a crisis in European thought. It ran through well over one
hundred and fifty separate editions in the sixteenth century alone' and, singular among Renaissance epics of any nation, spoke in every major and many a minor European tongue. Till roughly a century ago it was a staple in the formation of an educated western sensibility, its prime importance lying in its pivotal role in the transmission of the epic tradition. Part
I attempts to set in relief some of the signal features of the Innamorato, as constituting a kind of poetic capital that proved especially profitable for Ariosto when he combined it with a wide variety of interrelated Neoplatonic resources. Part II concerns itself with events and issues that intervened massively between the Innamorato and the Furioso - political changes, Vergilian scholarship, Neoplatonic love-lore, the impact of Lucianistic writing - and that are essential for understanding its content and structure.
Table of Contents
Orlando Innamorato: The palimpsest. "Furore" and "Dismisura" The Orlando-World of Immoderate Passion ; "Con atto umano" The world of Bradamante and Ruggiero. -- Orlando Furioso: The overwriting. Homage to the house a poem of love, history and society ; Neoplatonist art Ariosto, his contemporaries, and his friends ; THe vergilian expansion Trojan Aeneas, Trojan Ruggiero ; A clown's redemption herculean heroics and the triumphs of wit ; The laughter of Lucian Astolfo as Christian Menippus.