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Ludovico Ariosto's Orlando furioso is one of the masterpieces of the Renaissance, a work which, many argue, signalled the apogee of Renaissance fancy on the precipice of irony and decline. This collection of essays brings together twelve noted Italian and American scholars to provide a complete picture of Ariosto and all his works, covering topics such as historical criticism relating to Ariosto's place and time; philological investigations into the varying literary styles of the author, especially outside of the Furioso ; Ariosto's extrinsic relationships with other literary traditions; and formal and thematic excavations of the immanent aesthetics of the Furioso . Each essayist acknowledges the fact that Ariosto's creations are charged with allusions and allegiances variously inviting recognition or demanding the status of record. This reading of his works reveals that Ariosto was not a writer who believed, as it was previously thought, that literature is something escapist or fantastic in nature, but one who, in writing and re-writing his works, tried to re-interpret literary tradition while incorporating the new literary instruments that were available to him at the time: Ariosto's literary production is an integration of tradition and invention. This new reading of his work will be essential to any Italianist's library.

The article concerns Ludovico Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso, and its interpretation according to which it may be read as a poem about women who break the traditional male monopoly on heroism in the epic literature. The author aims to prove Ariosto’s innovative approach by analyzing Orlando Furioso’s protagonists. Hence the paper is mainly dedicated to three of Ariosto’s characters – Angelica, Marfisa and Bradamante. Those women are presented in a comparative perspective against their traditional prototypes with particular reference to those moments in the poem that render visible Ariosto’s novelty in creating his protagonists. Angelica, Marfisa and Bradamante, especially in contrast with the poem’s male cavalieri seem to be more in line with the canonical representations of heroism. In the first part of the study, the author presents Ariosto’s Angelica, often interpreted as a mere capricious object of man’s desire. Nevertheless, the character appears as self-aware and confident, striving to make her own decision when it comes to choosing the partner for life. The second part of the article is dedicated to Ariosto’s most canonical virago – Marfisa. Undefeated in the battlefield till the end of the poem, she often breaks her stereotypical comical image and consciously resigns from love. The last part of the study concentrates on Bradamante, who combines both amori and armi: the Christian knight, future founder of the Este noble family despite being in constant pursuit of her lover Ruggero, not sacrificing her passion for chivalry. According to the author of the article, Bradamante should be perceived as the central character of Orlando Furioso, as she carries the main idea of Ariosto’s masterpiece.

L'articolo intende presentare i criteri che verranno adottati nella nuova edizione in corso delle lettere di Ludovico Ariosto insieme allo specimen di una lettera del 15 luglio 1523 (la n. 101 dell'edizione Stella). Alla missiva, trascritta dall'autografo conservato presso l'Archivio di Stato di Modena, è premessa un'introduzione storica, completata da alcuni dati sul carteggio tra Ariosto, Lucca e Alfonso d'Este tra la fine di giugno e il 15 luglio 1523 che ne costituiscono la cornice documentaria.

In the Mandricardo-Doralice subplot of the Orlando Furioso , Ariosto parodies the courtly topos of \"love by fame\". His parody is marked by violence as well as by a fixation on possession that reflects the dangers of life at court and the precarity of Italy's position in Europe in the late Renaissance. Ariosto suggests that his craft, literature, has been reduced to a form of cultural currency in an increasingly mercenary world.

Critics of the “Orlando furioso” have analyzed at length the poem's darker veins, lying just beneath its ostensibly sunny surface, where Ariosto comments on the violence and political, intellectual, and religious upheavals of the early sixteenth century, often through allegory and irony. Readers have also noted the text's meticulously curated geography that lends to the story world of the “Furioso” extraordinary breadth of scale and specificity of detail. This study identifies the poem's geography as an important locus of irony, both in service to larger allegorical programs and as a means of remarking on the contemporary revolution in geographic knowledge and cartographic practice.

James talks about the undoing of dynastic epic in Ariosto's Orlando furioso. Ludovico Ariosto devoted over twenty-five years to composing his Orlando furioso, which he revised and expanded in three editions of 1516, 1521, and 1532. While these editions involve changes great and small in the poem's narrative sequence and patterns of imitation, just one matter of form dominates modern criticism: the sense of the ending.

This article analyses Ariosto's innovation of the topos of the descriptio puellae-description of the woman according to a stereotyped set of attributes-in his Rime. In particular, I highlight the following points: the unusual presence of 'canonic' elements in descriptions of the nude form; the poet's attention to the description of clothes and hairstyles; and the presence of an 'interior canon' regarding psychological and intellectual qualities. I investigate the role played by Ariosto's literary culture in developing each of these aspects, particularly focusing on intertextual borrowings from Latin poetry and echoes of contemporary treatises on woman.

La prosa epistolare di Paolo Giovio, pur collocandosi nella dimensione semipubblica dei testi non pensati per l'approdo a stampa, risulta esteticamente apprezzabile, rivelando l'alto grado di attenzione riservata dall'autore all'elaborazione formale. Tale letterarietà si manifesta con forza nella fitta trama di riferimenti intertestuali, i quali fanno capo sia al bacino della classicità greco-latina, sia a quello della produzione letteraria moderna. Il contributo si propone dunque uno studio del sistema di rimandi alla tradizione letteraria in volgare, con particolare riferimento ai contemporanei Pietro Aretino e Ludovico Ariosto, che miri a riflettere sulle ragioni sottese a determinate scelte gioviane sul piano tanto storico-politico, quanto sociale, culturale e biografico.

The article discusses John Stewart of Baldynneis’ version of Ludovico Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso as a case study for early modern indirect translation. Written in the 1580s, this translation precedes John Harington’s, and was composed at the court of James VI of Scotland. The young king had promoted a vernacular revival through a group of poets, translators and musicians; he himself translated a number of works by Guillaume de Salluste Du Bartas, such as L’Uranie, while Thomas Hudson translated another work by Du Bartas, La Judith. In this perspective, a translation of an Italian epic poem might seem to run counter to the prevailing fashion at court; but this translation owes much to intermediary French versions, such as Philippe Desportes’ Roland Furieux and Angelique. My analysis proceeds through the examination of individual passages that reveal the interplay of original text, intermediary translations, and final version.