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Translated here for the first time into English, Sergio Zatti'sThe Quest for Epicis a selection of studies on the two major poets of the Italian Renaissance, Ludovico Ariosto and Torquato Tasso, by one of the most important literary critics writing in Italy today. An original and challenging work,The Quest for Epicdocuments the development of Italian narrative from the chivalric romance at the end of the fifteenth century to the genre of epic in the sixteenth century. Zatti focuses on Ariosto'sOrlando Furioso, written in the early 1500s, and progresses to Tasso'sJerusalem Delivered, written at the end of the century, but also touches briefly on Boiardo, Ariosto's great predecessor at the Estense court in Ferrara, as well as on Pulci, Trissino, and many other Italian writers of the period. Zatti highlights the critical debates over narrative form in the sixteenth century that become signposts on the way to literary modernity and the eventual rise of the modern novel. Albert Russell Ascoli's introduction provides context by mapping Zatti's criticism and situating it among Italian and Anglo-American literary critical studies, making a case for the contribution this book will have for English-language readers.

Genealogies of Fiction is a study of gender, dynastic politics, and intertextuality in medieval and Renaissance chivalric epic, focused on Ludovico Ariosto's Orlando furioso. Relying on the direct study of manuscripts and incunabula, this project challenges the fixed distinction between medieval and early modern texts and reclaims medieval popular epic as a key source for the Furioso. Tracing the formation of the character of the warrior woman, from the amazon to Bradamante, the book analyzes the process of gender construction in early modern Italy. By reading the tension between the representations of women as fighters, lovers, and mothers, this study shows how the warrior woman is a symbolic center for the construction of legitimacy in the complex web of fears and expectations of the Northern Italian Renaissance court.

Galileo (1564–1642) incorporated throughout his work the language of battle, the rhetoric of the epic, and the structure of romance as a means to elicit emotional responses from his readers against his opponents. By turning to the literary as a field for creating knowledge, Galileo delineated a textual space for establishing and validating the identity of the new, idealized philosopher. Galileo's Reading places Galileo in the complete intellectual and academic world in which he operated, bringing together, for example, debates over the nature of floating bodies and Ludovico Ariosto's Orlando furioso, disputes on comets and the literary criticism of Don Quixote, mathematical demonstrations of material strength and Dante's voyage through the afterlife, and the parallels of his feisty note-taking practices with popular comedy of the period.

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.

Madeleine de l’Aubespine (1546–1596), the toast of courtly and literary circles in sixteenth-century Paris, penned beautiful love poems to famous women of her day. The well-connected daughter and wife of prominent French secretaries of state, l’Aubespine was celebrated by her male peers for her erotic lyricism and scathingly original voice. Rather than adopt the conventional self-effacement that defined female poets of the time, l’Aubespine’s speakers are sexual, dominant, and defiant; and her subjects are women who are able to manipulate, rebuke, and even humiliate men. Unavailable in English until now and only recently identified from scattered and sometimes misattributed sources, l’Aubespine’s poems and literary works are presented here in Anna Klosowska’s vibrant translation. This collection, which features one of the first French lesbian sonnets as well as reproductions of l’Aubespine’s poetic translations of Ovid and Ariosto, will be heralded by students and scholars in literature, history, and women’s studies as an important addition to the Renaissance canon.

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.

Although Renaissance scholars generally agree that Della Porta was the finest comic playwright of his generation in Italy, no detailed analysis of these plays and of their considerable influence outside Italy has previously appeared. One of the most famous men of his time in the field of scientific investigation, Della Porta wrote plays for relaxation and, on occasion, to camouflage controversial aspects of his scientific research from the Inquisitions. Today his works in science are largely forgotten and his right to fame rests on the plays. This book brings together the available facts of Della Porta's rich and often mysterious life and closely examines his dramatic works as part of the Italian literary scene in late Renaissance. Originally published in 1965. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

The epic poem of , Orlando Furioso (1516–1532), oneof the most influential texts of Renaissance writing, shows not only a precisecognition of early modern cartographic knowledge, as Alexandre Doroszlaï hasillustrated it in (1998), but also performs a complextransmedial translation of cartographic depictions. The journeys around the globeof the Christian paladins Ruggiero and Astolfo narrated by Ariosto are, in fact,performative negotiations between literary and cartographic processes. Riding theHippograph, the hybrid vehicle par excellence, Ruggiero and Astolfo fly over theEarth as if they were flying over a map. Their journeys do not merely transmediallytranslate the course to the West pursued by Early Modern Europe. Rather, bytranslating the map Ariosto performs a new geopoetics that turns away from thesymbolic dominance of the East (or “Ent-Ostung”, as Peter Sloterdijk has usefullycalled it) and offers us one of the first poetic versions of modern globalization.

Il retaggio medievale di un poema così moderno come l’Orlando furioso è un dato di estremo interesse, in quanto rivela, al di là della serie prevalente di spunti classici, il tenore di varie concezioni al tempo certamente più diffuse di quelle umanistiche. In questo senso provo a rintracciare un buon numero di riemersioni, tra loro coerenti e dialoganti, relative ai resoconti dei pellegrini italiani di ritorno dalla Terrasanta. Si approfondisce in questa maniera un genere costituito attorno a una forma etica e mentale ben presente a Ludovico Ariosto, quella dell’homo viator, nella quale il ferrarese innesta la metafora, questa sì di ascendenza greco-latina, dell’‘Ercole al bivio’. Even in a modern poem such as the Orlando furioso, the Medieval legacy turns out to be very relevant: despite the classical references, which definitely prevail, it reveals the effectivity of some convictions far more widespread than the Humanistic thought was. The present work aims to highlight several hints of 14th-15th century pilgrimage accounts in Ariosto’s masterpiece, taking as main points of reference the moral conception of homo viator and the symbol of Hercules at the crossroads.