Study guide

Orlando Furioso

by Ludovico Ariosto

Overview

Author: Ludovico Ariosto (1474–1533), poet, playwright and administrator in the service of the Este dukes of Ferrara
Published: Ferrara, 1516 (40 cantos); revised 1521; final enlarged edition 1532 (46 cantos). Five further cantos (the Cinque canti) appeared posthumously in 1545
Genre: Chivalric romance in verse (romanzo cavalleresco), written with the ambitions of classical epic; often called a romance epic
Form: Ottava rima: eight-line stanzas of hendecasyllables rhyming ABABABCC, about 4,800 stanzas in all; Rose keeps the stanza in English pentameter
Continuation of: Matteo Maria Boiardo's unfinished Orlando Innamorato (1483–1495), which Ariosto takes up where it broke off
Setting: The legendary war of Charlemagne against the African king Agramante and his Spanish ally Marsilio, ranging from Paris and the Pyrenees to Scotland, Holland, Damascus, Africa, the mouth of hell and the moon
Main threads: Charlemagne's war with the Saracens; Orlando's love for Angelica and his madness; the love of Ruggiero and Bradamante, legendary ancestors of the house of Este
Dedicatee: Cardinal Ippolito d'Este, brother of Duke Alfonso I, addressed in the opening stanzas as the 'Good seed of Hercules'
English translations: Sir John Harington (1591), John Hoole (1783), William Stewart Rose (1823–31, the quotation text here), Guido Waldman (prose, 1974), Barbara Reynolds (verse, 1975–77)
Names in Rose: Rose anglicises: Rogero (Ruggiero), Bradamant (Bradamante), Astolpho (Astolfo), Rodomont (Rodomonte), Agramant (Agramante), Marphisa (Marfisa), Olympia (Olimpia), Isabel (Isabella); Orlando is also 'Roland' and 'the County'

Context

Ludovico Ariosto was born in 1474 at Reggio Emilia, where his father commanded the garrison for the Este lords of Ferrara. Made to study law, he turned to Latin poetry and the classics, and from 1503 he served Cardinal Ippolito d'Este as a courtier, messenger and diplomat; an old story has the cardinal asking him where he had found so much nonsense. When Ippolito left for Hungary in 1517 Ariosto refused to follow him and passed into the service of Duke Alfonso I, who made him governor of the rough mountain province of the Garfagnana (1522–25). He also wrote comedies for the Ferrarese stage, among the first regular comedies in Italian, and seven verse Satires that give a wry picture of court service. He spent the last years of his life revising his great poem and died at Ferrara in 1533 (Gardner 1906) (Brand 1974).

The Furioso is a sequel. Matteo Maria Boiardo, count of Scandiano and also a Ferrarese courtier, had published the first two books of his Orlando Innamorato ('Orlando in Love') in 1483, joining the Carolingian legends of Charlemagne's paladins to the love and magic of the Arthurian romances: his Orlando, the chaste champion of the French epic tradition, falls in love with Angelica, princess of Cathay. Boiardo broke off in 1494, as the French army of Charles VIII invaded Italy, and died the same year. Ariosto begins exactly where he stopped, with the same characters and unresolved quarrels, and carries the story to its end. From Boiardo he also inherited the dynastic fiction that the Este descended from the Saracen knight Ruggiero and the Christian warrior-maiden Bradamante (Marinelli 1987) (Rajna 1900).

Ariosto worked on the poem for nearly thirty years. The first edition (1516) had forty cantos; the second (1521) revised the language; the third (1532) brought the Ferrarese idiom into line with the literary Tuscan recommended by Pietro Bembo and added six cantos' worth of new episodes, among them the story of Olimpia, the castle of Tristan, the cruel lord Marganorre and the rivalry of Ruggiero with the Greek prince Leone. The new episodes give the last version a darker and more deliberate shape, and it is this text that every modern edition and translation follows (Brand 1974) (Brand 1996).

The poem's manner is as distinctive as its matter. Ariosto took the ottava rima of the popular Italian story-singers and of Boiardo and gave it an unmatched ease and polish. He took from the French prose romances and from Boiardo the technique of interlace, in which many stories run at once and the narrator moves between them, often breaking off at a moment of suspense. And he created a narrator who comments, moralises, digresses, praises his patrons, jokes with his audience of ladies and gentlemen, and repeatedly reminds us that he is telling a story he claims to have found in the chronicle of Archbishop Turpin (Durling 1965) (Javitch 1980).

The Furioso was the best-selling poem of the Italian sixteenth century, reprinted, illustrated, annotated and moralised in scores of editions, and it set off a long critical quarrel over whether romance could be reconciled with the rules of Aristotle (Javitch 1991) (Weinberg 1961). Its influence on English literature was immediate. Sir John Harington's lively translation of 1591, which the site also holds, made it available to readers without Italian; the story goes that Queen Elizabeth sent him from court until he had translated the whole poem, after he circulated a racy version of canto 28 among her ladies. Spenser hoped in The Faerie Queene to 'overgo' Ariosto; Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing draws on the story of Ariodante and Ginevra in canto 5; and Cervantes made Don Quixote imitate Orlando's madness in the Sierra Morena (Ariosto 1972). Modern English readers have Guido Waldman's prose translation and Barbara Reynolds's version in ottava rima, and the essays in Ariosto Today survey current approaches (Ariosto 1974) (Ariosto 1977) (Beecher 2003).

Plot overview

Charlemagne is fighting the African king Agramante, who has invaded France with Marsilio of Spain to avenge his father, slain by the Christians. To keep his nephew Orlando and his cousin Rinaldo from quarrelling over Angelica, Charlemagne promises her to whichever of them fights better; when the Christians are routed she escapes, and the poem opens with her flight through the forest, pursued by every knight who sees her. Bradamante, Rinaldo's sister, seeks the Saracen knight Ruggiero, whom she loves and is destined to marry; the enchanter Atlante, who has raised Ruggiero and knows he will die young after his conversion, keeps snatching him away, and the winged hippogriff carries him to the island of the enchantress Alcina.

Orlando leaves the Christian camp in search of Angelica. After many adventures, among them the rescue of Olimpia from the sea-monster on the island of Ebuda, he finds the names of Angelica and the young Saracen soldier Medoro carved on the trees of a wood; Angelica, who scorned every great knight, has nursed the wounded Medoro, fallen in love with him and married him. Orlando goes mad, tears off his armour and runs naked through France and Spain, destroying all he meets. Meanwhile the Saracens besiege Paris, the champion Rodomonte rampages within its walls, and Discord, sent by the archangel Michael, sets the pagan leaders quarrelling among themselves.

The English paladin Astolfo, after his own travels on the hippogriff, flies to the Earthly Paradise and, guided by St John the Evangelist, rides to the moon, where everything lost on earth is stored. He brings back Orlando's wits in a flask and restores them to him in Africa. The Christians, now on the offensive, take Agramante's capital Biserta, and on the island of Lipadusa Orlando, Brandimarte and Oliviero fight Agramante, Gradasso and Sobrino; Brandimarte is killed, but the Saracen kings fall.

The poem's last cantos belong to Ruggiero and Bradamante. Ruggiero is baptised, but Bradamante's parents prefer the Byzantine prince Leone as a son-in-law. Ruggiero, in debt to Leone for saving his life, is forced to fight Bradamante in Leone's armour and win her for his rival; Leone, learning the truth, generously yields. The marriage is celebrated at Charlemagne's court, and the poem ends when Rodomonte appears to accuse Ruggiero of apostasy and is killed by him in single combat.

Part by part

Part 1: Cantos 1–3: Angelica's flight; Bradamante and Merlin's cave

Cantos 1–3

Summary

The narrator announces his subject, ladies, knights, arms and loves, and promises to tell of Orlando's madness, if the lady who has nearly made him mad as well leaves him wit enough. He dedicates the poem to Cardinal Ippolito d'Este and promises to sing of Ruggiero, ancestor of the Este. Angelica, whom Charlemagne had placed in the care of Duke Namo as a prize for the Christian victory that never came, escapes on horseback. In the forest she flees from Rinaldo, comes upon the Spanish Saracen Ferraù searching a river for his lost helmet, and finds the Circassian king Sacripante lamenting her loss. She decides to use him as an escort; he is unhorsed by an unknown knight in white, who is Bradamante, and then Rinaldo arrives in pursuit of his horse Baiardo.

A hermit's sprite parts Rinaldo and Sacripante by telling them Angelica has gone to Paris, and the hermit himself carries her off. Charlemagne sends Rinaldo to Britain for troops. Bradamante, searching for Ruggiero, meets the treacherous Pinabello, who tells her of a castle where the enchanter Atlante holds knights prisoner, and then drops her into a cavern. She finds herself in the tomb of Merlin, where the sorceress Melissa shows her a procession of spirits: the princes and heroes of the house of Este who will descend from her marriage with Ruggiero. Melissa explains how to free Ruggiero by taking Angelica's magic ring from the thief Brunello.

Analysis

The first stanza turns the opening of Virgil's Aeneid into a romance programme, plural and various, and the second promises something 'unattempted yet in prose or rhyme' while confessing that the poet himself is half mad with love. From the beginning, then, the narrator places himself inside the poem's main subject. The first canto is a comedy of desire in which every pursuer is frustrated: Angelica flees from those who love her and uses those she does not, and the knights collide in a forest that is both a place and an image of the wandering mind (Ascoli 1987).

The narrator's exclamation on the good faith of the old knights, who ride together on one horse after fighting, is typical of his irony: it praises the chivalric ideal while showing two rivals united only because both want the same woman. Canto 3 then sets out the poem's other, dynastic purpose. The scene in Merlin's tomb imitates Anchises' display of Rome's future heroes in Aeneid 6 and makes Bradamante, a warrior-maiden, the mother of the Este line. The Furioso will hold together these two modes, ironic romance and dynastic epic, without letting either swallow the other (Quint 1993) (Fichter 1982).

OF LOVES and LADIES, KNIGHTS and ARMS, I sing, Of COURTESIES, and many a DARING FEAT;

OF 1.1

The opening reverses Virgil's 'arms and the man', putting ladies and loves before arms and announcing a plural subject.

Oh! goodly truth in cavaliers of old! Rivals they were, to different faith were bred.

OF 1.22

Rinaldo and Ferraù, a Christian and a Saracen, ride off together in pursuit of the same woman: praise of old chivalry that is also a smile at it.

Since from thy womb a princely race shall spring, Whose name through Italy and earth shall ring.

OF 3.16

Merlin's voice greets Bradamante as the mother of the Este, the dynastic thread that runs beneath the whole poem.

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Part 2: Cantos 4–6: The hippogriff; Ginevra and Ariodante; Alcina's island

Cantos 4–6

Summary

Bradamante takes the ring from Brunello and, protected against enchantment, defeats Atlante, who has been carrying off knights on a winged horse and blinding them with a magic shield. His castle vanishes and Ruggiero is freed; but when Ruggiero mounts the hippogriff, it soars away with him. Rinaldo, blown by a storm to Scotland, learns that the king's daughter Ginevra is condemned to be burned under a law that punishes any unchaste woman, unless a champion proves her innocent. He sets out to defend her and on the way rescues her maid Dalinda from murderers.

Dalinda tells the story. She loved Polinesso, duke of Albany, who wanted Ginevra; Ginevra loved the Italian knight Ariodante. Polinesso persuaded Dalinda to dress in her mistress's clothes and receive him at Ginevra's balcony, and arranged for Ariodante to watch. Ariodante, believing Ginevra false, was reported drowned, and his brother Lurcanio accused her. Rinaldo arrives to find an unknown knight already fighting Lurcanio for Ginevra; he denounces Polinesso and kills him, and the unknown knight proves to be Ariodante, who marries Ginevra. Meanwhile the hippogriff lands Ruggiero on Alcina's island, where a myrtle tree speaks to him: it is Astolfo, transformed by the enchantress when she tired of him.

Analysis

The hippogriff, half horse and half griffin, was a creature of proverb, an image of the impossible; Ariosto makes it the poem's means of travel, and through it of its freedom to go anywhere. Rinaldo's outburst against the Scottish law, which punishes a woman for what is forgiven in a man, is the first statement of the poem's interest in the double standard, a theme it returns to in cantos 28 and 37 (Benson 1992).

The Ginevra story is a novella set inside the romance, told by a minor character, and its plot of a lady slandered by a staged scene at a window was taken up by Bandello and then by Shakespeare in the Hero and Claudio plot of Much Ado About Nothing, and by Spenser in Book 2 of The Faerie Queene. Astolfo's speech from the myrtle imitates Polydorus in Aeneid 3 and Pier della Vigna in Dante's Inferno 13, and warns Ruggiero, in vain, of the sensual enchantress he is about to meet.

A feathered courser, sailing through the rack, Who bore an armed knight upon his back.

OF 4.4

The hippogriff first appears to Bradamante as a wonder the villagers stare at like a comet.

Cursed be the law by which the dame is tried! Cursed he who would permit a doom so dire!

OF 4.63

Rinaldo condemns a law that kills a woman for loving: an early challenge to the double standard.

"If, as thy cheer and gentle presence teach, Thou courteous art and good, his reign unbound, Release me from this monster, I beseech:

OF 6.28

The myrtle that was Astolfo speaks, in an episode modelled on Virgil and Dante.

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Part 3: Cantos 7–9: Alcina unmasked; Angelica on Ebuda; Orlando and Olimpia

Cantos 7–9

Summary

Ruggiero fights his way to Alcina's palace and falls in love with her; he forgets Bradamante in a life of pleasure. Bradamante, learning from Melissa where he is, gives her Angelica's ring. Melissa comes to the island disguised as Atlante, reproaches Ruggiero for wasting his youth, and puts the ring on his finger. He sees Alcina as she truly is, an ancient and hideous hag, and resolves to escape to her virtuous sister Logistilla. Melissa restores Astolfo and Alcina's other lovers to human shape.

Angelica, fleeing from the hermit, is captured on the coast by the people of Ebuda, an island whose inhabitants offer a naked woman every day to a sea-monster, the orc. In Paris, Orlando dreams that he has lost her and leaves the city at night in black armour, abandoning Charlemagne at the height of the siege. Seeking Ebuda, he meets Olimpia, countess of Holland, who tells him how she resisted marriage to the son of the Frisian king Cimosco in order to keep faith with her betrothed Bireno, and how Cimosco, armed with a gun, killed her family and imprisoned Bireno. Orlando kills Cimosco, frees Bireno and throws the firearm into the sea.

Analysis

Alcina's island is an allegory of the senses, and the ring that dispels its illusion is the ring of reason. The allegory is clear but the narrator handles it lightly: Ruggiero's fall is ridiculous rather than tragic, and his escape is arranged by Melissa rather than by his own virtue. Spenser rewrote the episode as Acrasia's Bower of Bliss in The Faerie Queene, Book 2, and Tasso as the garden of Armida (Parker 1979).

The proem of canto 9 announces the problem of Orlando: love has made the Church's champion forget his king, his uncle and his God. His departure from Paris is a desertion, and Ariosto's Orlando is a hero whose great deeds in these cantos are done on the way to somewhere else. The Olimpia episode, added in 1532, introduces the poem's most faithful woman, and Cimosco's gun brings the modern world of artillery into the romance.

Pale, lean, and wrinkled was the face, and white, And thinly clothed with hair Alcina's head;

OF 7.73

The ring reveals Alcina as she is: beauty as illusion, undone by the instrument of reason.

What cannot, when he has a heart possess'd This false and cruel traitor Love? since he Can banish from Orlando's faithful breast Such tried allegiance and due loyalty?

OF 9.1

The narrator's proem diagnoses Orlando's fault before his madness: love has displaced duty and faith.

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Part 4: Cantos 10–12: Olimpia abandoned; Angelica freed; the palace of illusions

Cantos 10–12

Summary

Bireno, sailing home with Olimpia, falls in love with a young captive and abandons his wife asleep on a deserted island. She wakes to find the shore empty and laments like Ariadne. Ruggiero reaches Logistilla's kingdom, learns to guide the hippogriff, and flies home over Asia and northern Europe, seeing Rinaldo's British army muster. Over Ebuda he sees Angelica chained naked to a rock, blinds the orc with Atlante's shield and carries her away; but when he tries to take her by force she slips the magic ring into her mouth and vanishes, and the hippogriff flies off.

Orlando reaches Ebuda, kills the orc, and finds Olimpia, who has in turn been captured and exposed. Oberto, king of Ireland, falls in love with her and marries her, and later punishes Bireno. At this point the narrator digresses on the gun Orlando threw into the sea, recovered long after and spread through Europe to the ruin of chivalry. Ruggiero, pursuing what he thinks is Bradamante in a giant's grip, and Orlando, pursuing a phantom of Angelica, both enter a new palace of Atlante, where every knight wanders endlessly in search of what he desires most. Angelica appears, sets her pursuers against each other and escapes again; Orlando goes on to slaughter a Saracen troop and finds Isabella, a captive of robbers in a cave.

Analysis

Olimpia's lament draws on Catullus 64 and Ovid's Heroides 10, and the rescue of Angelica, a naked woman chained to a rock and saved from a sea-monster by a flying hero, is a version of Perseus and Andromeda. Ariosto deliberately makes Ruggiero's rescue end in attempted rape and farce, while Orlando's parallel rescue of Olimpia ends in a marriage; the doubled scene invites comparison of the two heroes.

The palace of Atlante is the poem's most complete image of its own world: knights wander its rooms, each pursuing a phantom of what he wants, unable to find it or to leave. Critics have seen in it an emblem of the romance quest and of the interlaced narrative that keeps desire in suspension (Ascoli 1987) (Parker 1979). The lament on firearms, by contrast, looks at the present: the 'foul and pestilent discovery' that makes valour worthless was the weapon of the Italian wars, in which Duke Alfonso's artillery was famous.

She calls Bireno, and the caverns round, Pitying her grief, Bireno's name rebound.

OF 10.22

Olimpia on the empty shore, in a scene modelled on Ariadne's lament: nature answers her when her husband cannot.

How, foul and pestilent discovery, Didst thou find place within the human heart?

OF 11.26

The narrator's attack on the gun, the invention that ends the age of knightly valour.

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Part 5: Cantos 13–15: Isabella's story; the siege of Paris; Astolfo's travels

Cantos 13–15

Summary

Isabella, daughter of the king of Galicia, tells Orlando how she fled with her Scottish lover Zerbino, how Zerbino's friend Odorico tried to rape her, and how she fell into the robbers' hands. Orlando kills the robbers and takes her with him. Bradamante, guided by Melissa, learns of the Este women who will descend from her, but is caught in Atlante's palace like everyone else. Agramante reviews his army before Paris.

The Tartar king Mandricardo, hearing of Orlando's slaughter of two Saracen squadrons, sets out to find him, and on the way carries off Doralice, the betrothed of Rodomonte. God sends the archangel Michael to find Silence and Discord: Silence to guide Rinaldo's army unseen to Paris, Discord to set the pagans against one another. Michael looks for them in a monastery, finds Discord there and no Silence at all. The Saracens storm Paris, and Rodomonte, king of Algiers, leaps into the city. Far to the east Astolfo, leaving Logistilla with a magic book and a horn whose blast puts all to flight, travels home through India, Arabia and Egypt, where he binds the giant Caligorante and kills Orrilo, a robber who reassembles himself every time he is cut to pieces.

Analysis

The narrator's close to canto 13 is his clearest statement of method: he leaves Bradamante imprisoned and promises to free her later, because a story, like a meal, is better for variety. The interruptions at the ends of cantos, and in the middle of them, are not carelessness but a calculated technique, which Daniel Javitch has called a 'cantus interruptus' (Javitch 1980).

Michael's search for Silence in the cloister and his discovery of Discord there is one of Ariosto's sharpest pieces of anticlerical satire, and the angel's errand gives the Christian war a providential frame that the poem treats with a straight face and a smile at once. The siege of Paris, at the centre of the poem, recalls the assaults on Troy and on Aeneas' camp; Rodomonte inside the walls is modelled on Turnus in Aeneid 9.

As taste is quickened by variety, So it appears that, in the things I tell, The wider here and there my story ranges, It will be found less tedious for its changes.

OF 13.80

The narrator defends the interlace: his story, like a varied meal, pleases by its changes.

Here Silence is not; nor ('tis said) is found Longer, except in writing, on this ground.

OF 14.80

The archangel discovers that silence survives in the monastery only as a written rule.

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Part 6: Cantos 16–18: Rodomonte in Paris; Grifone at Damascus; Cloridano and Medoro

Cantos 16–18

Summary

The poem alternates between Paris and the East. In Syria the Christian knight Grifone, still in love with the faithless Orrigille, finds her with her new lover, the coward Martano, and is persuaded that he is her brother. At King Norandino's tournament in Damascus Grifone fights brilliantly while Martano runs away; Martano then steals Grifone's armour while he sleeps and claims his honours, and Grifone is mocked as the coward. He takes his revenge in canto 18, and Martano is publicly punished.

Within Paris Rodomonte burns and kills until Charlemagne and his paladins drive him into the Seine; he swims out of the city. Rinaldo's relief army, led to the walls by Silence, breaks the siege, and the Saracens are defeated. The warrior-woman Marfisa enters the story, and sails for France with Grifone and his companions. At night two young Saracen soldiers, Cloridano and Medoro, leave their camp to find and bury the body of their dead lord Dardinello. They kill many sleeping Christians, find the body by moonlight, and are surprised by a troop of Scots under Zerbino.

Analysis

The Grifone and Martano story is a comedy of false appearances, in which a coward wins credit for a brave man's deeds by stealing his arms. Ariosto delights in such exchanges of armour, horses and swords, which show how far chivalric honour depends on signs that can be stolen (Wiggins 1986).

The night raid of Cloridano and Medoro is a careful imitation of Nisus and Euryalus in Aeneid 9, which itself imitates the night raid of Iliad 10. Ariosto keeps Virgil's beauty, loyalty and slaughter, but makes his young men risk their lives for love of their lord rather than for glory. The moon that lights Medoro's way prepares the moon of canto 34, and the change from Virgil's story, in which both friends die, will lead to the turning point of the poem.

Medoro and Cloridan were named the pair;

OF 18.165

Two humble soldiers, 'from stock obscure', enter the poem: the obscurity of Medoro's birth matters for what follows.

Had not the moon, at young Medoro's prayer, Out of a gloomy cloud put forth her horn.

OF 18.183

The moon answers Medoro's prayer and reveals Dardinello's body among the dead, as in Virgil's night raid.

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Part 7: Cantos 19–21: Angelica and Medoro; the city of women; Gabrina

Cantos 19–21

Summary

Cloridano is killed defending Medoro, and Medoro is left for dead. Angelica, riding by, takes pity on the wounded boy, heals him with herbs in a shepherd's hut, and falls in love with him. They marry, spend a month of love in the countryside, carving their names on every tree and rock, and set off for Cathay, leaving the shepherd a jewelled bracelet that Orlando once gave her.

Marfisa and her companions are wrecked on the coast of Alessandretta, ruled by women who kill or enslave all male visitors unless one can defeat ten of their champions and satisfy ten women in a night. Marfisa fights their champion, Guido the Savage, who turns out to be Rinaldo's half-brother, and Astolfo, arriving by chance, routs the whole city with his horn. Astolfo leaves the others and travels alone. Marfisa, meeting Zerbino, forces him to escort the wicked old woman Gabrina, from whom he hears false news of Isabella's death. In canto 21 a dying knight tells Zerbino of Gabrina's crimes.

Analysis

Angelica's love for Medoro is the hinge of the poem. The princess who scorned Orlando, Rinaldo and kings falls for a nameless soldier, and does so not through his deeds but through her own pity. The narrator presents this as Love's revenge on her pride, but the scene is also tender and pastoral, and Angelica, until now an object chased by every man, becomes for once the subject of her own desire. After her marriage she appears only once more, in canto 29, and the narrator later leaves the rest of her story to 'some voice in happier verse' (30.16) (Finucci 1992).

The carved names, 'quaintly interlaced', are literally the writing that will drive Orlando mad, and their interlacing echoes the poem's own technique. The city of murderous women, founded by Greek wives abandoned by their husbands after Troy, is a satirical utopia that turns the conventions of male power upside down; canto 20 opens with a proem praising the deeds of ancient and modern women (Shemek 1998).

Touched was her haughty heart, once hard and curst, And more when he his piteous tale rehearsed.

OF 19.20

Pity, not prowess, wins Angelica: the reversal that sets up Orlando's madness.

MEDORO and ANGELICA were traced, In divers cyphers quaintly interlaced.

OF 19.36

The lovers' carved names, the fatal inscription that Orlando will read in canto 23.

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Part 8: Cantos 22–24: The palace destroyed; Orlando's madness; the death of Zerbino

Cantos 22–24

Summary

Astolfo, with the help of his magic book, breaks Atlante's palace of illusions and frees its prisoners, among them Ruggiero and Bradamante, who meet at last. They go to save a youth condemned to the stake, and Ruggiero overthrows the knights of Pinabello's castle with Atlante's blinding shield, which he then throws into a well in shame. Bradamante kills Pinabello but loses Ruggiero again. Astolfo takes the hippogriff. Zerbino, accused of Pinabello's murder, is rescued by Orlando and reunited with Isabella. Orlando fights Mandricardo, who has sworn to win his sword Durindana.

Riding alone, Orlando comes to the place where Angelica and Medoro stayed. He sees their names on the trees and tries to persuade himself that 'Medoro' is a name she has given him. In a grotto he reads Medoro's verses, in Arabic, thanking the place for the nights he lay there with Angelica. At the shepherd's house he hears the whole story and sees his own bracelet. He weeps through the night, cuts down the trees and the inscription, and on the fourth day throws off his armour and clothes and runs mad through the countryside, uprooting trees and killing beasts and shepherds. In canto 24 Zerbino finds Orlando's scattered arms and hangs them on a tree as a trophy; Mandricardo takes Durindana and kills Zerbino in combat, and Isabella mourns him.

Analysis

Canto 23 is the centre of the poem in every sense. Orlando's madness grows by stages that Ariosto traces with psychological exactness: denial, reinterpretation, the slow acceptance of what the writing says, grief, and the final collapse of reason. The hero of Christendom becomes a naked wild man, stripped of the armour that made him a knight. The episode draws on the madness of Tristan and Lancelot in the French romances, on the mad Ajax and Hercules of antiquity, and on Petrarch's lover, and the narrator, who confessed in the first canto to being half mad himself, now draws the moral for all lovers in the proem to canto 24 (Ascoli 1987) (Zatti 2006).

It is significant that it is reading that destroys Orlando. He is a reader who cannot accept a text's plain meaning, and the scene has been read as a lesson about interpretation as well as about love (Ascoli 1987). Ariosto also chooses this moment to break off, in the middle of the frenzy, with one of his most daring interruptions.

With mind and eyes close fastened on the block, At length he stood, not differing from the rock.

OF 23.111

Reading Medoro's verses again and again, Orlando is turned to stone: the first stage of his madness.

I am not -- am not what I seem to sight: What Roland was is dead and under ground,

OF 23.128

Orlando's last lucid speech: he is a ghost of himself, his true self killed by Angelica.

For love, in fine, is nought but phrensied rage, By universal suffrage of the wise:

OF 24.1

The proem after the madness: the narrator draws the moral, and admits that the rest of us are mad in other ways.

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Part 9: Cantos 25–27: Ricciardetto and Fiordispina; Merlin's fountain; Discord in the Saracen camp

Cantos 25–27

Summary

Ruggiero, on his way to help Agramante, saves a youth from the stake: Ricciardetto, Bradamante's twin brother. Ricciardetto tells how the Spanish princess Fiordispina fell in love with Bradamante, taking her for a man; he himself, looking just like his sister, then went to Fiordispina pretending that a fairy had changed Bradamante into a man, and so became her lover until they were discovered. Ruggiero and his companions free the cousins Malagigi and Viviano from Saracen hands. At a fountain made by Merlin, Malagigi explains the carvings: a monstrous beast, Avarice, that ravages the world until it is hunted down by future kings and princes, among them Francis I of France.

Mandricardo and Rodomonte, who now arrives to reclaim Doralice, quarrel with Ruggiero and Marfisa over arms, horses and women, and Discord, sent back by the angel, sets them fighting. In canto 27 the Saracen champions rout Charlemagne's army, who retreat to Paris, but in Agramante's camp the quarrels multiply until the king lets Doralice choose between Rodomonte and Mandricardo. She chooses Mandricardo, and Rodomonte, humiliated, leaves the army, cursing women.

Analysis

Ricciardetto's story turns Bradamante's armour into a comedy of gender: a woman loves a woman dressed as a man, and a man takes his sister's place by pretending to be a woman transformed. The episode echoes Ovid's story of Iphis and Ianthe, and modern critics have found in it a playful examination of the boundaries of sex and desire (Finucci 1992) (Shemek 1998). The beast of Avarice on Merlin's fountain turns the romance toward contemporary history, with prophetic praise of named princes.

The quarrels in the pagan camp parody the quarrel of Agamemnon and Akhilleus that begins the Iliad: the Saracen army is defeated not by Christian arms but by the desires and rivalries of its own champions. Discord's laughter over the scene suggests a world in which passion, not providence, governs events.

And made most havoc in the Roman court; For it had slaughtered Pope and Cardinal:

OF 26.32

The beast of Avarice carved on Merlin's fountain ravages even the papal court: prophecy turned to satire.

At this mad Discord laughed, no more in fear That any truce or treaty should ensue;

OF 27.100

Discord rejoices in the pagan quarrels: the enemy army destroys itself through rivalry over horses, arms and women.

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Part 10: Cantos 28–30: The innkeeper's tale; Isabella's death; Ruggiero and Mandricardo

Cantos 28–30

Summary

Canto 28 begins with the narrator's warning to ladies to skip the story, which he tells only because Turpin does. At an inn Rodomonte hears the host tell of Astolfo, king of Lombardy, and the handsome Giocondo, who each discover that their wives are unfaithful, set off to test all the women of the world, and finally share a single girl in bed, only to find that she has a lover too. They decide all women are the same and go home content. An old man objects to the tale's slander. Rodomonte, riding south, meets Isabella travelling with a hermit and falls in love with her.

To escape rape, Isabella tells Rodomonte that she knows a potion that will make him invulnerable, and invites him to test it on her neck; drunk, he strikes off her head. In remorse he builds a tower-tomb and a narrow bridge over the river, where he fights every passing knight and hangs their arms on the monument. Orlando, mad, comes to the bridge and wrestles Rodomonte into the river, then crosses into Spain, where he meets Angelica and Medoro without recognising her and kills her horse. He swims to Africa. In canto 30 Ruggiero fights Mandricardo for the right to the eagle device of Hector and kills him, though badly wounded himself; Bradamante waits for him in vain at Montalbano.

Analysis

The innkeeper's tale is a novella in the tradition of Boccaccio and of the misogynist tale, and the narrator's elaborate apology to the ladies is a joke, but also a framing device that distances him from it. In the next canto Isabella's choice of death over violation answers the innkeeper's claim that no woman is faithful, and the narrator celebrates her as a martyr of chastity. The two cantos together form the first stage of the poem's 'woman question' (Benson 1992) (Shemek 1998).

Rodomonte, the most violent of the pagans, is transformed by grief into a kind of mad lover himself, and the meeting at the bridge sets the two madmen against each other. Orlando's encounter with Angelica in Spain, in which neither knows the other and he kills her horse, is the bleak comic end of the love that drove the poem.

Omit this canto, and -- the tale untold -- My story will as clear and perfect be;

OF 28.2

The narrator invites his readers to skip the misogynist tale, and so makes them complicit in reading it.

Spirit! which nobly didst esteem more dear Thy plighted faith, and chaste and holy name,

OF 29.26

The narrator's apostrophe to Isabella, who chose death to keep faith with the dead Zerbino.

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Part 11: Cantos 31–34: The bridge of Rodomonte; Tristan's castle; Astolfo on the moon

Cantos 31–34

Summary

Rinaldo meets his half-brother Guidone and the Christians attack Agramante's camp. Fiordiligi tells Brandimarte of Orlando's madness; Brandimarte goes to the bridge and is thrown into the river and taken prisoner by Rodomonte. Rinaldo and Gradasso fight for Baiardo, until the horse runs away. Bradamante, hearing that Ruggiero is with Marfisa, burns with jealousy. At the castle of Tristan, where only the best knight and the most beautiful lady may lodge, she defeats three kings, then removes her helmet and argues that she can claim both places. In a hall of the castle she sees paintings, made by Merlin, of the French wars in Italy still to come, down to Ariosto's own time.

Astolfo, on the hippogriff, reaches Ethiopia, where the blind king Senapo is plagued by Harpies; he chases them into the mouth of hell. There he meets the spirit of Lidia, punished for cruelty to her lover. He then flies to the Earthly Paradise on top of a mountain, where St John the Evangelist tells him that Orlando's madness is God's punishment for turning his love from his faith. In Elijah's chariot they travel to the moon. In a valley there lies everything lost on earth: reputations, prayers, lovers' sighs, the gifts of princes, and men's wits, stored in flasks labelled with their owners' names. Astolfo recovers part of his own and takes Orlando's, the largest of all, and sees the Fates spinning the threads of human lives.

Analysis

The paintings in the castle of Tristan bring the poem's prophecies to the Italy of the reader: the French expeditions into Italy, down to the campaigns of Ariosto's own day. The disasters of contemporary history are seen through a romance frame, and the effect is not only praise but lament (Quint 1993) (Ascoli 1987).

Astolfo's journey to the moon, which owes something to Lucian's satirical voyages and to Leon Battista Alberti, is the poem's most famous invention. The moon is a world like ours, and the valley of lost things is a satire on human vanity: what is lost on earth is almost everything men value, and the wits of many who seemed wise are there in large quantities. The apostle John, a writer himself, becomes the poem's guide to the meaning of madness, and the scene plays on the line between Christian allegory and comic fantasy (Ascoli 1987) (Zatti 2006).

A warfare storied, but its fields unfought.

OF 33.6

Merlin's paintings show wars that have not yet been fought: the poem's future, and the reader's recent past.

Collected there are all things whatsoe'er, Lost through time, chance, or our own folly, here.

OF 34.73

The valley of lost things on the moon, the satirical centre of the poem.

And from those others was discerned, since writ Upon the vessel was ORLANDO'S WIT.

OF 34.83

Orlando's wits, the largest flask of all, carefully labelled: the cure for madness is found in writing again.

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Part 12: Cantos 35–38: Bradamante and Marfisa; Marganorre's law; the invasion of Africa

Cantos 35–38

Summary

On the moon St John shows Astolfo an old man, Time, who throws the names of the dead into the river of oblivion; only a few are saved by swans, who are poets. The apostle explains that the fame of Augustus, Aeneas and Penelope depends on poets, who could have told the opposite story, and adds that he too was a writer. On earth Bradamante unhorses Rodomonte at his bridge, frees the prisoners and wins Ruggiero's horse Frontino. She challenges Ruggiero at Arles and fights Marfisa, until the ghost of Atlante cries from his tomb that Ruggiero and Marfisa are twin brother and sister, and tells their history. Bradamante's jealousy ends.

Canto 37 opens with praise of women writers, among them Vittoria Colonna. Ruggiero, Bradamante and Marfisa find Ullania and her ladies stripped and humiliated by Marganorre, a lord who, after losing his sons through women, made a law of cruelty against all women. They punish him, and the women of the town kill him; Marfisa imposes a new law protecting women. Marfisa is baptised at Charlemagne's court. Astolfo returns to Ethiopia, cures Senapo's blindness, and leads his army against Africa, turning stones into horses and leaves into ships. Agramante and Charlemagne agree to decide the war by a single combat between Rinaldo and Ruggiero.

Analysis

St John's speech on poets is the most daring passage on patronage in the poem. If Augustus owes his reputation for goodness to Virgil, and Penelope hers for chastity to Homer, then the praise Ariosto gives the Este may be equally a gift of poetry, or a fiction. The passage both flatters the poet's power and quietly undermines encomium, and critics have long debated how far it reflects Ariosto's own experience of service (Ascoli 1987) (Quint 1993).

The proem to canto 37 and the Marganorre episode, both added in 1532, are the most explicit treatment of the 'woman question' in the poem: male writers have hidden women's achievements, and a lord's misogynist law is overthrown by armed women. Whether these passages represent genuine sympathy, courtly compliment or an unresolved tension with the misogyny voiced elsewhere is a central question of modern criticism (Benson 1992) (Shemek 1998) (Finucci 1992).

Authors I love, and pay the debt I owe, Speaking their praise; an author I below!

OF 35.28

St John on the moon admits he too was a writer, and defends poets' power to make or unmake fame.

Seed of one father, on one womb ye lay; And first together saw the light of day.

OF 36.59

Atlante's ghost reveals that Ruggiero and Marfisa are twins, ending Bradamante's jealousy.

To such a pitch would mount the female name, As haply ne'er was reached by manly fame.

OF 37.2

The narrator argues that women's fame has been suppressed by envious male writers.

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Part 13: Cantos 39–42: Orlando restored; Lipadusa; the fountain of disdain

Cantos 39–42

Summary

The duel between Rinaldo and Ruggiero is broken off when Melissa, disguised as Rodomonte, persuades Agramante to break the truce, and the Saracens are routed. In Africa Astolfo besieges Biserta; Dudone's fleet brings the Christian prisoners freed from Rodomonte's tower, including Brandimarte and Oliviero. A naked madman appears among the Nubian soldiers: Orlando. With great effort the knights bind him, wash him seven times in the sea, and Astolfo holds the flask to his nose; he breathes in his wits and is cured, and his love for Angelica is gone.

Biserta is taken. Agramante, fleeing by sea, meets Gradasso, and they and Sobrino challenge Orlando, Brandimarte and Oliviero to a three-against-three combat on the island of Lipadusa. Ruggiero, sailing to Africa, is shipwrecked and, as he swims for his life, vows to become a Christian; he is baptised by a hermit who foretells his future. At Lipadusa Brandimarte is killed by Gradasso, and Orlando kills both Gradasso and Agramante. Rinaldo, still in love with Angelica, is attacked by the monster Jealousy, rescued by a knight, Disdain, and drinks from the fountain that ends love. A Mantuan knight entertains him in a palace adorned with statues of the famous women of the Este age.

Analysis

Orlando's recovery is quick and almost comic: he regains his wits through his nose, wakes like a man from a nightmare, and is more sensible than ever. The poem does not let him grieve for Angelica; it simply removes his love. The episode completes the moon's satire: reason is a fluid that can be bottled, spilled and inhaled (Ascoli 1987).

The combat at Lipadusa is the poem's most epic battle, and Brandimarte's death, with Fiordiligi's grief, gives it real pathos. Ruggiero's shipwreck and baptism, at last fulfilling the condition for his marriage, resolve the dynastic plot, while Rinaldo's cure by the fountain of disdain shows that love can be ended as arbitrarily as it began.

The mystic cup withal. Oh wondrous case! The unsettled mind its ancient seat regained;

OF 39.57

Orlando inhales his wits and is cured, in the poem's ironic resolution of its title.

As one, that seems in troubled sleep to see Abominable shapes, a horrid crew;

OF 39.58

Orlando wakes from madness as from a nightmare, unsure what he has done.

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Part 14: Cantos 43–46: The enchanted cup; Ruggiero and Leone; the wedding and Rodomonte's end

Cantos 43–46

Summary

Rinaldo's host offers him an enchanted cup from which only a man with a faithful wife can drink without spilling. Rinaldo refuses to test his wife, and the host, weeping, tells how the test destroyed his own marriage. A boatman tells another story, of the jealous judge Anselmo, whose wife Argia was tempted by a lover's riches, and who was himself caught in a worse fault. Brandimarte is buried in Sicily, Fiordiligi dies of grief at his tomb, and Orlando and his companions come to the hermit's island, where Sobrino is baptised and Oliviero healed.

Rinaldo promises Bradamante to Ruggiero, but her parents Amone and Beatrice have promised her to Leone, son of the Greek emperor Constantine. Bradamante declares she will marry only a man who can withstand her in combat for a day. Ruggiero goes east to fight Leone, is captured and condemned, and is freed by Leone himself, who admires his valour without knowing who he is. In gratitude Ruggiero agrees to fight Bradamante disguised as Leone; he wins her for his rival, and goes into the forest to starve himself to death. The Bulgarians, whom he had helped, seek him as their king; Leone, learning the truth from Melissa, yields Bradamante. The poem ends with the wedding, a pavilion woven by Cassandra and showing the deeds of Ippolito d'Este, and Rodomonte's challenge: Ruggiero kills him, and his spirit goes down to hell.

Analysis

The cup stories, an ancient folk motif known from Arthurian romance, return to the questions of jealousy and trust raised in canto 28, and Rinaldo's refusal to drink is the wisdom of not wanting to know. Canto 46 opens with the narrator imagining his poem as a ship reaching harbour, where a crowd of friends, ladies and poets of his own day wait on the shore: the fiction ends in the real world of Ariosto's court and literary circle (Durling 1965).

The last episodes, added in 1532, are about the conflict of love and obligation, and Ruggiero's agony shows a seriousness quite different from the poem's early comedy. The final duel imitates the end of the Aeneid, where Aeneas kills Turnus and Turnus' spirit flees to the shades; Ariosto's poem thus closes with an epic ending, and with the founding of a dynasty, after forty-six cantos of romance (Quint 1993) (Zatti 2006).

I know not if it wise or foolish be, But to know more than needs, I am not fain.

OF 43.7

Rinaldo refuses the cup that would test his wife's fidelity.

But now, methinks -- yea, now I see the land; I see the friendly port its arms expand.

OF 46.1

The narrator's poem as a voyage nearing harbour, where his friends wait to welcome him.

The indignant spirit fled, blaspheming loud; Erewhile on earth so haughty and so proud.

OF 46.140

Rodomonte's death closes the poem, in deliberate imitation of the death of Turnus at the end of the Aeneid.

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Characters

Christians

Orlando: Charlemagne's nephew and the greatest of his paladins (the Roland of the French Chanson de Roland; Rose calls him both 'Orlando' and 'Roland'). Boiardo made him fall in love with Angelica; Ariosto makes that love drive him mad when he discovers her marriage to Medoro (canto 23). Naked and destructive, he wanders through France, Spain and Africa until Astolfo restores his wits (canto 39); he then kills Agramante and Gradasso at Lipadusa.
Rinaldo: Lord of Montalbano, Orlando's cousin and rival for Angelica, and brother of Bradamante. He brings the British army that saves Paris, defends Ginevra in Scotland, and is finally cured of his love by drinking from the fountain of disdain. His horse Baiardo is one of the poem's prizes.
Astolfo: An English prince and paladin, comic in Boiardo, who becomes Ariosto's great traveller. Turned into a myrtle by Alcina, he is restored and given a magic book and horn; later, on the hippogriff, he destroys Atlante's palace, rescues the king of Ethiopia from the Harpies, visits hell and the Earthly Paradise, and flies to the moon to recover Orlando's wits (canto 34).
Charlemagne: Emperor and king of France ('Charles' in Rose), besieged in Paris by Agramante. He is a dignified but rather passive figure, whose decision to put Angelica up as a prize starts the poem's action.
Brandimarte: Orlando's most loyal friend, a converted Saracen, devoted husband of Fiordiligi. Captured at Rodomonte's bridge, he is freed in Africa and killed at Lipadusa by Gradasso (canto 41).
Zerbino: Prince of Scotland and lover of Isabella. Brave and courteous, he is unjustly accused of murder, rescued by Orlando, and killed by Mandricardo while defending the mad Orlando's sword (canto 24).
Leone: Son of the Greek emperor Constantine, promised Bradamante by her parents. He saves Ruggiero's life without knowing who he is and, when he learns the truth, generously gives up his claim (canto 46).

Saracens

Agramante: King of Africa ('Agramant' in Rose), who invades France to avenge his father Troiano. A young and impulsive leader, he cannot control the quarrels of his champions; he loses his capital Biserta and is killed by Orlando at Lipadusa.
Ruggiero: A Saracen knight of Trojan descent ('Rogero' in Rose), raised by the enchanter Atlante, beloved of Bradamante and destined to found the house of Este. His long wandering includes Alcina's island and the rescue of Angelica; he kills Mandricardo, is baptised after a shipwreck (canto 41), marries Bradamante and kills Rodomonte in the final combat. His sister is Marfisa.
Rodomonte: King of Algiers ('Rodomont'), the most violent and boastful of the pagans, whose name gave English the word 'rodomontade'. He rampages inside Paris, is rejected by Doralice, kills Isabella by mistake, and guards a bridge in her memory. He is killed by Ruggiero at the end of the poem.
Mandricardo: King of Tartary, who seeks Orlando, carries off Doralice, wins Durindana after Orlando's madness and kills Zerbino. He is killed by Ruggiero in their combat over the eagle device of Hector (canto 30).
Ferraù: A Spanish knight ('Ferrau'), one of Angelica's first pursuers in canto 1, searching a river for the helmet he dropped there; he later steals Orlando's helmet.
Sacripante: King of Circassia, a faithful but futile lover of Angelica, who uses him as an escort in canto 1 and is unhorsed by Bradamante.
Gradasso: King of Sericana, a mighty warrior who came to France to win Durindana and Baiardo. He kills Brandimarte at Lipadusa and is killed by Orlando.
Medoro: A young African soldier of humble birth, loyal to his dead lord Dardinello (canto 18). Wounded, he is nursed by Angelica, who falls in love with and marries him (canto 19). Their names on the trees drive Orlando mad.

Women warriors and ladies

Bradamante: Rinaldo's sister ('Bradamant'), an invincible warrior in white armour, who seeks Ruggiero through most of the poem and is destined by Merlin to be the mother of the Este. She is brave, jealous and determined, and her marriage to Ruggiero ends the poem.
Marfisa: A fierce Indian queen and warrior ('Marphisa'), revealed in canto 36 to be Ruggiero's twin sister. She punishes Marganorre, is baptised at Charlemagne's court, and argues in canto 45 that Bradamante is already promised to Ruggiero.
Angelica: Princess of Cathay, loved by Orlando, Rinaldo, Sacripante, Ferraù and many others. She flees all of them, uses her magic ring to escape, and finally falls in love with and marries the humble Medoro, with whom she leaves for the East. She is the object of almost everyone's desire and the subject of her own only once.
Olimpia: Countess of Holland ('Olympia'), who sacrifices everything to keep faith with Bireno, only to be abandoned by him on a desert island (canto 10). Exposed to the orc, she is saved by Orlando and marries Oberto, king of Ireland.
Isabella: Princess of Galicia ('Isabel'), lover of Zerbino. After his death she chooses to be killed by Rodomonte rather than lose her chastity (canto 29), and the narrator praises her as a model of fidelity.
Fiordiligi: Brandimarte's devoted wife ('Flordelice'), whose grief for her husband and death at his tomb are among the poem's most moving passages.
Ginevra: Scottish princess ('Geneura'), condemned for unchastity through Polinesso's trick and saved by Rinaldo and Ariodante (cantos 4–6).
Doralice: Princess of Granada, betrothed to Rodomonte, carried off by Mandricardo, whom she chooses in canto 27; her choice provokes Rodomonte's tirade against women.

Enchanters and others

Atlante: An old African enchanter ('Atlantes') who raised Ruggiero and tries to keep him from his destiny of conversion and early death. He keeps a hippogriff, a blinding shield, and builds palaces of illusion. His ghost reveals Ruggiero and Marfisa's parentage (canto 36).
Melissa: A benevolent sorceress, descendant of Merlin, who protects Bradamante and her destiny, frees Ruggiero from Alcina, and arranges the final happy outcome.
Alcina: An enchantress who rules a pleasure-island, seduces knights and changes them into plants and animals; unmasked by the ring, she appears as an old hag. Her virtuous sister Logistilla represents reason.
Merlin: The Arthurian prophet, whose spirit speaks from his tomb in canto 3 and whose prophetic art appears in the fountain of canto 26 and the paintings of canto 33.
St John the Evangelist: Astolfo's guide in the Earthly Paradise and on the moon (cantos 34–35), who explains Orlando's madness and the power of poets to make or unmake fame.

Themes

Love and madness

The title announces a hero who is not simply in love, as in Boiardo, but mad. Orlando's madness is the extreme case of a condition the narrator finds everywhere: love is a forest in which all go astray, and the narrator himself confesses in canto 1 that his lady has nearly brought him to the same pass. In canto 24 he concludes that all lovers are mad, differing only in the form of their madness.

Madness in the poem is both moral and comic. St John explains it as divine punishment for Orlando's turning from faith to love; the moon shows that the wits of almost everyone are partly lost. Yet the cure is physical and arbitrary, and Rinaldo is cured of love by a drink from a fountain. The poem treats reason as precious and fragile, and doubts whether anyone possesses it whole (Ascoli 1987).

Desire and illusion

The characters pursue objects that slip away: Angelica flees, horses run off, Atlante's palace shows each knight the phantom of what he most desires. The poem's restless motion is the motion of desire, and many of its enchantments, Alcina's beauty, Atlante's palaces, the magic ring, are images of the mind's power to deceive itself.

Ariosto's interlace reproduces this experience in the reader, who is constantly led toward a resolution and then made to wait. Critics have described romance as a mode of delay and 'dilation', and the Furioso as its masterpiece (Parker 1979).

Faith and fidelity

The Italian word fede means both religious faith and personal loyalty, and the poem plays constantly on both senses. Olimpia, Isabella, Fiordiligi and Bradamante are models of fidelity; Bireno, Polinesso, Gabrina and Martano are models of betrayal. Knights keep or break their word, and Agramante's breach of the treaty in canto 39 brings his ruin.

The war between Christians and Saracens is also a war of faith, but conversions are common and the narrator praises the courtesy of pagan knights. Ruggiero's long delay in being baptised, and his final keeping of both his faith and his word to Leone, make fidelity the moral heart of the dynastic plot.

Dynasty, patronage and history

The poem was written for the Este and celebrates their legendary origin in the marriage of Ruggiero and Bradamante. Prophecies, the procession in Merlin's tomb, the carvings of Merlin's fountain, the paintings at Tristan's castle and Cassandra's pavilion all point to the real history of Ferrara and Italy.

Yet the poem is also aware of the cost of its praise. St John's speech on poets suggests that fame is a poet's creation, and the paintings show the disasters of the Italian wars. Many modern critics see the Furioso as a poem written in a time of crisis, whose harmony is a deliberate and fragile achievement (Ascoli 1987) (Quint 1993) (Fichter 1982).

Women, arms and the woman question

The poem's two women warriors, Bradamante and Marfisa, are as strong as any knight, and its women range from the faithful Olimpia and Isabella to the treacherous Gabrina and the evasive Angelica. The narrator addresses ladies directly, defends them in the proems of cantos 20, 28 and 37, and tells misogynist tales that he then disowns.

The Renaissance debate over the nature and worth of women, the querelle des femmes, runs through the poem. Whether Ariosto's defence of women is sincere, ironic or merely courtly is a central question of modern feminist criticism (Benson 1992) (Finucci 1992) (Shemek 1998).

Chivalry and the modern world

The poem looks back on a world of knights with nostalgia and irony. Its heroes are courteous and brave, but their honour depends on armour that can be stolen and horses that can be won, and their wars are decided by enchantment and chance.

The firearm of Cimosco, which ends the age of personal valour, and the paintings of the Italian wars bring the poem's legendary world into contact with the present, in which artillery and mercenary armies decide battles.

Motifs

The interlace and the broken-off canto

The narrator weaves many stories at once, dropping one character at a moment of suspense to take up another, and often ends a canto in mid-action with a promise to return. Daniel Javitch has shown how deliberately this technique plays on the reader's expectations (Javitch 1980).

Proems

Most cantos open with a short moral essay in the narrator's voice, on love, fortune, avarice or women, which comments on the action that follows, sometimes seriously and sometimes with irony (Durling 1965).

Exchanged arms, horses and swords

Armour, horses (Baiardo, Frontino, Brigliadoro) and swords (Durindana, Balisarda) are lost, stolen, won and disputed constantly. Identity in the poem is often a matter of the signs one carries, and these can be taken.

Writing and inscriptions

Carved names, Medoro's verses, the labels on the flasks of the moon, the prophetic carvings and paintings: written signs repeatedly decide the fates of characters and reflect on the poem's own writing.

Women chained or exposed

Angelica and Olimpia chained to the rock of Ebuda, Ginevra at the stake, Ullania's ladies stripped: the repeated image of the exposed woman links the romance's rescues to its arguments about women.

Symbols

The hippogriff

The winged horse, offspring of a griffin and a mare, carries Ruggiero to Alcina's island and Astolfo to the Earthly Paradise. It embodies the poem's freedom to travel anywhere, and its imaginative audacity.

Angelica's ring

The magic ring makes its wearer invisible when placed in the mouth and dispels enchantment when worn on the finger. It is the instrument of Angelica's escapes and of reason's victory over illusion on Alcina's island.

Atlante's palace

The palace where each knight pursues a phantom of what he desires is an image of the poem's world of endless, self-deceiving quest (Ascoli 1987).

The valley of lost things

The valley on the moon, where everything lost on earth is stored, makes visible the vanity of human wishes, and Orlando's wits in their labelled flask make reason a substance that can be lost and recovered.

Critical debates

Unity and the interlace

Sixteenth-century critics who read the poem with Aristotle's Poetics in mind found it lacking unity of action: many heroes, many stories, no single plot. Its defenders, notably Giovan Battista Giraldi Cintio and Giovan Battista Pigna in 1554, argued that romance was a new genre with its own rules, and that variety itself pleased (Weinberg 1961) (Javitch 1991).

Modern criticism has generally found deliberate design in the poem's variety. Benedetto Croce saw its unity in the poet's serene and ironic 'harmony', the spirit with which he contemplates everything (Croce 1920). Later critics, such as Robert Durling, Peter Wiggins and Daniel Javitch, studied the patterns of parallel and contrast that connect episodes, and the deliberate effects of interruption; Albert Ascoli argued that the poem's harmony is a 'bitter' one, a fragile balance achieved in the face of crisis (Durling 1965) (Wiggins 1986) (Javitch 1980) (Ascoli 1987).

Irony and the narrator

The narrator, who comments, digresses, pretends to follow Turpin, addresses his patrons and ladies and confesses his own amorous folly, has been seen as the poem's most original creation. Robert Durling's study of the figure of the poet in Renaissance epic treated him as a carefully constructed persona, distinct from the historical Ariosto, through whom the poem examines its own fictions (Durling 1965).

How far the irony extends is debated. Some critics see it as playful and urbane, in the spirit of Croce's 'harmony' (Croce 1920); others, such as Ascoli, see in it a defence against, and an exposure of, the poem's own claims to truth, praise and moral teaching (Ascoli 1987).

Madness and reason

Orlando's madness has been read as moral allegory, as psychological study and as satire. St John's explanation that it is a divine punishment invites an allegorical reading, but the comedy of the moon, where nearly everyone's wits are kept, makes madness universal (Zatti 2006).

Ascoli connects the theme to the Renaissance tradition of folly, from Erasmus's Praise of Folly, and argues that the poem questions the possibility of the stable reason it seems to recommend, including the reason of the poet himself (Ascoli 1987).

Encomium and its subversion: the poem and the Este court

The Furioso praises the Este throughout, from its dedication to Cardinal Ippolito to the prophecies of canto 3 and the pavilion of canto 46. Some readers take this as the conventional price of patronage; Ariosto's Satires, however, show a poet resentful of court service (Gardner 1906).

Critics have pointed to passages that complicate the praise: St John's claim that poets create fame, the avarice of princes in canto 26, and the paintings of the Italian disasters. David Quint and Andrew Fichter discuss the poem in the tradition of dynastic epic, and Ascoli reads its praise as ambivalent, a poem of 'crisis and evasion' (Quint 1993) (Fichter 1982) (Ascoli 1987).

Gender and the 'woman question'

The poem's women warriors, its defences of women in proems, and its misogynist tales place it at the centre of the Renaissance querelle des femmes. Pamela Benson reads it as a significant contribution to the debate about female independence, especially in the episodes added in 1532 (Benson 1992).

Valeria Finucci, drawing on psychoanalytic theory, examines how the poem constructs female subjectivity and male desire, and Deanna Shemek reads its wandering women as figures of social disorder that the poem both enjoys and contains. The contrasting cantos 28 and 37 are central evidence in this debate (Finucci 1992) (Shemek 1998).

Romance versus epic and the Counter-Reformation critics

In the mid-sixteenth century, critics debated whether the Furioso should be judged by the rules of classical epic. Giraldi Cintio and Pigna defended romance; others condemned its multiplicity and its immorality. Torquato Tasso's theoretical discourses sought a heroic poem with unity and variety together, and his Gerusalemme Liberata (1581) set off a quarrel between partisans of Ariosto and of Tasso (Weinberg 1961) (Tasso 1973).

Daniel Javitch has shown how this controversy and the commentaries and allegories attached to sixteenth-century editions made the Furioso a classic, and Sergio Zatti has studied the passage from Ariosto's romance to Tasso's epic (Javitch 1991) (Zatti 2006).

Ariosto and Boiardo

Ariosto's poem continues Boiardo's, and its relationship to the Innamorato has long been studied. Pio Rajna's monumental study of the Furioso's sources, first published in 1876, showed how much Ariosto drew from Boiardo, from the French and Italian romances, and from classical poets (Rajna 1900).

Peter Marinelli argues that Ariosto both continues and transforms Boiardo, making a more ironic and more classical poem from his predecessor's exuberant romance. The dynastic plot, the characters and even the madness grow out of Boiardo's suggestions (Marinelli 1987).

Key passages

OF LOVES and LADIES, KNIGHTS and ARMS, I sing, Of COURTESIES, and many a DARING FEAT;

The narrator · OF 1.1

The opening rewrites Virgil's 'arms and the man I sing' in the plural and in the mode of romance. Ladies come before knights, and love before arms; the subject is not one hero but a whole world of courtly adventure.

Oh! goodly truth in cavaliers of old! Rivals they were, to different faith were bred.

The narrator · OF 1.22

Rinaldo and Ferraù, enemies in faith and rivals for Angelica, ride together on one horse after fighting. The narrator's praise of old chivalry is at once sincere and ironic, a model of his double tone.

As taste is quickened by variety, So it appears that, in the things I tell, The wider here and there my story ranges, It will be found less tedious for its changes.

The narrator · OF 13.80

Ariosto's own defence of the interlace: variety pleases. The passage anticipates the critical debate over unity that followed the poem's publication.

MEDORO and ANGELICA were traced, In divers cyphers quaintly interlaced.

The narrator · OF 19.36

The lovers' carved names are the inscription that will drive Orlando mad. Their interlacing echoes the poem's narrative technique, and makes writing the hinge of the plot.

With mind and eyes close fastened on the block, At length he stood, not differing from the rock.

The narrator, of Orlando · OF 23.111

Orlando, having read Medoro's verses many times in search of another meaning, is turned to stone by the truth: the first stage of his madness.

I am not -- am not what I seem to sight: What Roland was is dead and under ground,

Orlando · OF 23.128

Orlando's last lucid words before his frenzy declare his identity destroyed. The hero who defined Christian chivalry no longer recognises himself.

Omit this canto, and -- the tale untold -- My story will as clear and perfect be;

The narrator · OF 28.2

The narrator distances himself from the innkeeper's misogynist tale by inviting readers to skip it, a gesture both gallant and ironic, since few will.

Collected there are all things whatsoe'er, Lost through time, chance, or our own folly, here.

The narrator · OF 34.73

The valley of lost things on the moon, a satirical inventory of human vanity, in which Astolfo finds Orlando's wits.

To such a pitch would mount the female name, As haply ne'er was reached by manly fame.

The narrator · OF 37.2

The proem to canto 37, added in 1532, argues that women's fame has been suppressed by envious male writers: a key passage in the poem's 'woman question'.

The indignant spirit fled, blaspheming loud; Erewhile on earth so haughty and so proud.

The narrator · OF 46.140

The poem's last lines imitate the death of Turnus at the end of the Aeneid, closing the romance with an epic ending and the founding of the Este dynasty.

Questions for study

Why does Ariosto call his poem Orlando Furioso when Orlando is absent from so much of it?
Consider the theme of madness in other characters and in the narrator, the proem to canto 24, and the moon in canto 34.
How does the interlace affect the experience of reading the poem?
Look at the end of canto 13 and the interruption in canto 23. Consider suspense, comparison between parallel episodes and the narrator's control.
What kind of figure is the narrator, and how far can we trust him?
Consider his proems, his appeals to Turpin, his apologies to ladies in canto 28 and his confession of his own folly.
Why does Angelica choose Medoro, and what does her choice mean for the poem?
Consider his humble birth, the role of pity, and what Angelica's choice does to the knights who have pursued her.
How does Ariosto present Orlando's descent into madness in canto 23?
Trace the stages from denial to frenzy, and consider the role of reading and writing.
What is the significance of Astolfo's journey to the moon?
Consider the valley of lost things, the flasks of wits, St John's explanation and his speech about poets in canto 35.
How does the poem praise the Este, and are there signs that it questions that praise?
Compare Merlin's prophecy in canto 3 with St John's remarks on Augustus and Virgil in canto 35.
Compare the presentation of Bradamante and Marfisa with that of Angelica and Olimpia.
Consider agency, desire, fidelity and how men see them.
How do cantos 28 and 37 contribute to the Renaissance debate about women?
Consider the narrator's framing, Isabella's death in canto 29 and the Marganorre episode.
How does the ending of the poem bring romance and epic together?
Consider Ruggiero's conflict between love and obligation, the wedding, Cassandra's pavilion and the echo of the end of the Aeneid.