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Ludovico Ariosto (Renaissance and Reformation)

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  1. Introduction
  2.  
  3. Ludovico Ariosto (b. 1474–d. 1533), whose work links 15th-century humanism with the vernacular classicism that burgeoned later in the 16th century, is a crucial figure in the development of Italian Renaissance literary culture. An accomplished Neo-Latin poet whose earliest letter is a request for books on Platonism from the Venetian publisher Aldus Manutius (1498), Ariosto used his considerable knowledge of classical Latin literature to forge a literary corpus that blends ancient literary models with medieval ones to create an impressive example of vernacular classicism. No less than his contemporary Michelangelo Buonarroti did for art, Ariosto took the literary revival of Antiquity to new heights. Accordingly, Ariosto can be seen as a forerunner of Miguel de Cervantes and other vernacular prose artists whose critical recapitulations of medieval chivalric fiction under the influence of classical works and classicizing authors like Ariosto eventually led to the birth of the novel. For modern readers who are accustomed to the conventions of modern fiction, at times Ariosto sounds strangely familiar, even postmodern.
  4.  
  5. General Overviews
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  7. Catalano 1930–1931 remains the essential critical study of Ariosto’s life, which also includes detailed discussions of the creation and production of all of his works. Subsequent biographies such as those listed here must start with Catalano’s study. There is nothing as thorough and good in English. Noyes 1904 and Gardner 1968 provide useful information on the cultural milieu in which the poet lived and worked. Italians continue to produce full-scale studies of Ariosto that reflect the most recent critical discoveries and discussions (Sangirardi 2006, Ferroni 2008, Jossa 2009), whereas readers in English must depend on Brand 1974 and Griffin 1974, still sound but now somewhat outdated.
  8.  
  9. Brand, C. P. Ludovico Ariosto: A Preface to the Orlando Furioso. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1974.
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  11. Introduction to the man and his works in the context of a larger reading of Orlando Furioso.
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  13. Catalano, Michele. Vita di Ludovico Ariosto ricostruita su nuovi documenti. 2 vols. Geneva, Switzerland: Olschki, 1930–1931.
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  15. The fundamental biography of Ariosto, with minute attention to what he did and when he did it.
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  17. Ferroni, Giulio. Ariosto. Rome: Salerno Editrice, 2008.
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  19. Full introduction to Ariosto’s works, with much attention to the humanist tendencies and perspectives that shaped them.
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  21. Gardner, Edmund. The King of Court Poets: A Study of the Work, Life, and Times of Ludovico Ariosto. New York: Greenwood, 1968.
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  23. Originally published in 1906. At times breezy but much more informative than you might think and surprisingly dependable.
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  25. Griffin, Robert. Ludovico Ariosto. New York: Twayne, 1974.
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  27. Excellent straightforward introduction to the man and his works.
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  29. Jossa, Stefano. Ariosto. Bologna, Italy: Il Mulino, 2009.
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  31. Part of the new series published by Il Mulino on literary history, intended to complement Bruscagli’s discussion in Il Quattrocento e il Cinquecento in the same series.
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  33. Noyes, Ella. The Story of Ferrara. London: Dent, 1904.
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  35. A fast-paced popularizing history for the tourists of once upon a time, a volume in the Medieval Towns Series, with much on Ariosto throughout. Reprinted, Nendeln, Liechtenstein: Kraus Reprint, 1970.
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  37. Sangirardi, Giuseppe. Ludovico Ariosto. Florence: Le Monnier, 2006.
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  39. Full treatment of all of Ariosto’s works from the theoretical perspective of psychoanalytic criticism. The approach never gets in the way.
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  41. Essay Collections
  42.  
  43. The surge in interest in Ariosto in the 20th century produced numerous volumes of essays, often tied to international conferences, that remain important collections of critical work. Several of these items were published to coincide with the celebrations tied to the dates of Ariosto’s birth (1474) or death (1533). L’Ottava d’oro 1933, compiled at the height of Fascist ascendency, contains curious critical oddities but also important essays that reflect trends in reading Ariosto in the first quarter of the 20th century. Segre 1976 was a watershed publication that recapitulated the best postwar criticism and introduced a new generation of critics who would define the study of Ariosto in Italy for the next quarter century. On a smaller scale, Scaglione 1976 tried to do the same for the United States. Cerulli 1975 situates the author in a European context, with essays on his fortunes in different cultural traditions. Wiggins and Saccone 1988 presents readings of the poet’s narrative poetics by Italianists and comparatists, while Cervigni 1994, a larger volume, locates Ariosto in the literary-historical continuum of the European narrative poem as it develops in Italy from Luigi Pulci and Matteo Maria Boiardo to Torquato Tasso, emphasizing as well Ariosto’s influence on later European epic. Beecher, et al. 2003 is a grab bag of essays on a variety of topics connected with Ariosto’s works. Canova and Galli 2007 emphasizes a renewed focus on Ariosto’s medieval predecessors and sources heretofore ignored by most modern critics. Following in its wake, Bolzoni, et al. 2008 showcases the interpretive work of many of the best new critics in Italy.
  44.  
  45. Beecher, Donald, Massimo Ciavolella, and Roberto Fedi, eds. Ariosto Today: Contemporary Perspectives. Toronto: Toronto University Press, 2003.
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  47. A dozen essays on all aspects of Ariosto’s art, from his use of the classics (Looney) to an essay by Weaver on his narrative interweaving to an essay on Calvino’s dialogue with the poet (Re).
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  49. Bolzoni, Lina, Maria Cristina Cabani, and Alberto Casadei, eds. Special Issue: Ludovico Ariosto: Nuove prospettive e ricerche in corso. Italianistica 37.3 (2008).
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  51. Includes essays by many of the best young Italian critics, marking a new generation of Ariosto scholarship being cultivated under the influence of the capable editorial team based in Pisa.
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  53. Canova, Andrea, and Paola Vecchi Galli, eds. Boiardo, Ariosto e i libri di battaglia: Atti del Convegno Scandiano-Reggio Emilia-Bologna 3–6 ottobre 2005. Novara, Italy: Interlinea, 2007.
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  55. Volume that may prove to be a watershed for its many essays that mark a move in criticism away from the Furioso in and of itself and that look instead at the vernacular narrative works of the previous two to three generations that may have influenced the composition of Ariosto’s poem. It remains to be seen the extent to which subsequent studies pick up where these contributions leave off.
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  57. Cerulli, Enrico, ed. Convegno Internazionale Ludovico Ariosto: Roma-Lucca-Castelnuovo di Garfagnana-Reggio Emilia-Ferrara, 27 settembre–5 ottobre 1974. Atti dei Convegni Lincei 6. Rome: Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei, 1975.
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  59. Noteworthy for essays on Ariosto’s fortune in other literary traditions, including French, German, Spanish, English, Polish, and Russian.
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  61. Cervigni, Dino S., ed. Special Issue: The Italian Epic and Its International Context. Annali d’Italianistica 12 (1994).
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  63. A volume produced near the end of an intensely fecund period of criticism, especially in North America, on Ariosto and Tasso. With essays by Ascoli, Martinez, Quint, and Stephens, among others. Also includes pieces on Geoffrey Chaucer (Anderson), Edmund Spenser (Rhu), and Fonte (Finucci). Bibliographical updates on criticism of Boiardo, Pulci, and Ariosto (Rodinisee Rodini 1994, cited under Bibliographies and Dictionaries).
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  65. L’Ottava d’oro: La vita e l’opera di Ludovico Ariosto: Letture tenute in Ferrara per il quarto centenario della morte del poeta: Con due messaggi di Gabriele D’Annunzio. Milan: A. Mondadori, 1933.
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  67. Fascinating Fascist attempt to appropriate Ariosto that includes a speech by Italo Balbo, Benito Mussolini’s protégé, on Astolfo and flight (delivered 6 May 1928). Papers by Malaparte on Orlando’s madness, Bontempelli on Ariosto’s geography, and Marinetti on futurism in the Furioso. Many of the most significant Ariosto critics of the time contributed to the volume, which weighs in at nearly one thousand pages.
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  69. Scaglione, Aldo, ed. Ariosto 1974 in America: Atti del Congresso Ariostesco—Dicembre 1974, Casa Italiana della Columbia University. Ravenna, Italy: Longo, 1976.
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  71. Collection of ten essays that cover the Furioso, the Satires, Ariosto’s sources, and Ariosto in the Anglo-Saxon world (including a substantial bibliography of the fortunes of Ariosto in English and American literature), and a concise presentation by Esposito on the editorial situation of Ariosto’s works in the mid-1970s, with a brief history of the text of each respective work.
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  73. Segre, Cesare, ed. Ludovico Ariosto: Lingua, stile e tradizione: Atti del Congresso organizzato dai comuni di Reggio Emilia e Ferrara, 12–16 ottobre 1974. Milan: Feltrinelli, 1976.
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  75. Twenty-three essays, approximately half by venerable voices of the day (e.g., Blasucci, Ghinassi, Grayson, Segre, Stella) and half by a generation of critics new to the scene in the early 1970s (e.g., Bruscagli, Fedi, Ossola, Ronchi, Tissoni Benvenuti). Much emphasis on metrical, linguistic, rhetorical, and stylistic questions, with due attention paid to Ariosto’s minor works as well as the Furioso.
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  77. Wiggins, Peter DeSa, and Eduardo Saccone, eds. Special Issue: Perspectives on Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso. Modern Language Notes 103.1 (January 1988).
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  79. Nine essays that pay special attention to Ariosto’s narrative poetics. With seminal essays by Javitch, Murrin, and Zatti, among others. In addition there is a bibliographical update by Rodini (see Rodini 1988, cited under Bibliographies and Dictionaries).
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  81. Bibliographies and Dictionaries
  82.  
  83. Products of positivist research, Bolza 1866 and Ferrazzi 1881 still provide surprising, valuable insights into Ariosto’s life and works. For the complicated printing history of each of Ariosto’s works, Agnelli and Ravegnani 1933 remains fundamental. For criticism, Fatini 1958 is the iceberg to which Rodini and Di Maria 1984 adds the tip, a sizable tip whose growth in the following decade Rodini 1988 and Rodini 1994 continued to document. Casadei 2008 points out on page 167 that there has been a lull in monographic studies on the Furioso in recent years, with attention finally being given to the minor works and to areas of study heretofore ignored, such as philological questions and vernacular narrative sources from the 1400s and early 1500s that may have influenced the composition of Ariosto’s poem.
  84.  
  85. Agnelli, Giuseppe, and Giuseppe Ravegnani. Annali delle edizioni ariostee. 2 vols. Bologna, Italy: Zanichelli, 1933.
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  87. Descriptive bibliography of the editions of Ariosto’s writings, minor and collected works as well as the Orlando Furioso. Essential tool for any student of the complicated printing history of Ariosto’s Furioso.
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  89. Bolza, G. B. Manuale Ariostesco. Venice: Münster, 1866.
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  91. More than one hundred introductory pages of short concise notes on topics ranging from sources, women, memory slips, similes, monsters, emblems, past participles, and more. Followed by a nearly four-hundred-page dictionary/concordance to the Furioso. With three foldout tables: genealogy of the House of Este, links among knights, Christian and pagan, depicted in the poem, and a map of the travels of Ruggiero and Astolfo.
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  93. Casadei, Alberto. “Nuove prospettive su Ariosto e sul Furioso.” In Special Issue: Ludovico Ariosto: Nuove prospettive e ricerche in corso. Edited by Lina Bolzoni, Maria Cristina Cabani, and Alberto Casadei. Italianistica 37.3 (2008): 167–192.
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  95. This review article of Dorigatti’s edition of the 1516 Orlando Furioso (2006) and Sangirardi’s comprehensive study of Ariosto 2006 (cited under Editions and Textbooks) packs in a wealth of other bibliographical references and the keen insight about all things Ariostean that one associates with its author.
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  97. Fatini, Giuseppe. Bibliografia della critica ariostea, 1510–1956. Florence: Le Monnier, 1958.
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  99. The fundamental bibliography, arranged chronologically beginning with the earliest responses to Ariosto’s work. Very helpful summaries of the earliest critical responses to Ariosto, especially to the Orlando Furioso.
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  101. Ferrazzi, Giuseppe Jacopo. Bibliografia Ariostesca. Bassano, Italy: Tipografia Sante Pozzato, 1881.
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  103. The first comprehensive annotated bibliography that has more in common with an encyclopedic reference work on anything to do with Ariosto, with numerous subsections, including ones on biography, the Este, iconography, portraits, poems in honor of Ariosto, inscriptions, medals, music compositions, translations, Lombardisms in Ariosto’s comedies, and much more.
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  105. Rodini, Robert J. “Selected Bibliography of Ariosto Criticism, 1980–87.” Modern Language Notes 103.1 (1988): 187–203.
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  107. An update of Rodini and Di Maria 1984.
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  109. Rodini, Robert J. “Selected Bibliography of Ariosto Criticism, 1986–1993.” Annali d’Italianistica 12 (1994): 299–317.
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  111. An update of Rodini and Di Maria 1984.
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  113. Rodini, Robert J., and Salvatore Di Maria. Ludovico Ariosto: An Annotated Bibliography of Criticism, 1956–1980. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1984.
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  115. Invaluable resource for students of the poem that tracks the burgeoning criticism in the Anglo-American academies as well as in Italy and other European countries. Arranged in alphabetical order by critic’s name. Includes very full subject index as well as an index keyed to Ariosto’s works.
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  117. Textual Bibliography
  118.  
  119. Students of Ariosto know that the poet labored over his masterpiece from the first decade of the 1500s to the end of his life. Having overseen the definitive third edition in 1532, nine months before he died, if we are to believe his brother Galasso, the poet remained unsatisfied with the final version and hoped to publish yet another edition, claiming that in the third his text had been “assassinato” (murdered) (Trovato 1991, p. 34). He simply could not stop writing, revising, and reworking his brilliant poem. In addition to the four new episodes (approximately fifty-six hundred lines) he added to the final edition, Ariosto was constantly revising the linguistic fabric of his text, working hard, if not consistently, to render its original padano illustre (the literary Italian of the Po Valley) more Tuscan, to bring it more in line with the strictures of the new vernacular classicism being promoted by Pietro Bembo and his followers. The first edition of 1516 already significantly bears the imprint of Bembo, that of 1521 more so, and the final edition even more. A prodigious amount of heroic bibliographic research has been conducted around the Furioso to make sense of these ongoing changes in the text, beginning with Ariosto 1937 (edited by Debenedetti), Dionisotti 1961, and Contini 1982. The methodology of Fahy 1989 shaped the critical approaches in textual bibliography of the next generation, including Harris 1999 and Dorigatti and Stimato 2006. Casadei 1988 and Casadei 2003 are by the most perceptive commentator on this scholarship. Martignoni, et al. 2012 allows one to track changes in the text across the three editions.
  120.  
  121. Ariosto, Ludovico. I frammenti autografi dell’Orlando Furioso. Edited by Santorre Debenedetti. Turin, Italy: Chiantore, 1937.
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  123. Carefully presented publication of the complete collection of the author’s autographs on the Furioso that reveal his many changes and reconsiderations while writing, offering a precious glimpse of the poet at work and insight into his writing habits. Includes a schematic table of passages that allows one to compare the various versions for the additions, insertions, and replacements of specific passages.
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  125. Casadei, Alberto. La strategia delle varianti: Le correzioni storiche del terzo Furioso. Lucca, Italy: Maria Pacini Fazzi, 1988.
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  127. A study of the development of the poem through an examination of the internal alterations the poet makes over the second and third versions in response to his changing (and traumatic) historical moment.
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  129. Casadei, Alberto. “The History of the Furioso.” Translated by Carmela Colella. In Ariosto Today: Contemporary Perspectives. Edited by Donald Beecher, Massimo Ciavolella, and Roberto Fedi, 55–70. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2003.
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  131. Clear, straightforward presentation of the compositional history of the Furioso.
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  133. Contini, Gianfranco. “Come lavorava l’Ariosto.” In Esercizi di lettura. By Gianfranco Contini, 232–241. Turin, Italy: Einaudi, 1982.
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  135. An essay first published in 1937 in response to Debenedetti’s edition of Ariosto’s autographs (Ariosto 1937), in which the author proposes how critics should interpret the variants that confront the reader of Ariosto’s handwritten materials and how to collate those with the authoritative printed editions of his works.
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  137. Dionisotti, Carlo. “Appunti sui Cinque canti e sugli studi ariosteschi.” In Studi e problemi di critica testuale: Atti del Convegno-Bologna, 7–9 aprile 1960. Edited by the Commissione per i Testi di Lingua, 369–382. Bologna, Italy: Commissione per i Testi di Lingua, 1961.
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  139. Argues convincingly that Ariosto drafted the Cinque canti between 1519 and 1521 rather than in the late 1520s. Argues against the prevailing opinion that the first edition of the poem is of lesser quality than the two latter ones, calling it a “capolavoro assoluto” (absolute masterpiece) (p. 375).
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  141. Dorigatti, Marco, and Gerarda Stimato, eds. Orlando Furioso secondo la princeps del 1516. Florence: Leo S. Olschki, 2006.
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  143. A restoration of the original text of the 1516 edition, following the methodology adopted in Fahy 1989, with a lengthy introduction of 180 pages. In a combination of analytic, descriptive, and historical bibliographical research, Dorigatti produces the best text available of the first edition, the version of the poem that Dionisotti called an “absolute masterpiece” (Dionisotti 1961, p. 375).
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  145. Fahy, Conor. L’Orlando Furioso del 1532: Profilo di una edizione. Milan: Vita e Pensiero, 1989.
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  147. Magisterial study of the definitive third edition of the poem by one of the masters of textual bibliography.
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  149. Harris, Neil. “Per una filologia del titolo corrente: Il caso dell’Orlando Furioso del 1532.” In Bibliografia testuale o filologia dei testi a stampa? Atti del Convegno di Studi in onore di C. Fahy, Udine, 24–26 febbraio 1997. Edited by Neil Harris, 139–204. Udine, Italy: Forum, 1999.
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  151. A detailed study of the typographical material at the top of each printed page, in particular the running titles, of the 1532 edition in the broader context of an inquiry into the status of bibliographical studies.
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  153. Martignoni, Clelia, Luigina Morini, and Manuela Sassi, eds. Rimario diacronico nell’Orlando Furioso. General editor Cesare Segre. 2 vols. Pavia, Italy: IUSS, 2012.
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  155. A rhyming dictionary based on the third edition that for each verse of the poem also provides the equivalent verses from the first two editions, creating a “diachronic” resource with which one can check Ariosto’s linguistic changes between 1516, 1521, and 1532.
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  157. Trovato, Paolo. Con ogni diligenza corretto: La stampa e le revisioni editoriali dei testi letterari italiani,1470–1570. Bologna, Italy: Il Mulino, 1991.
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  159. The authoritative study of the mechanics and ideology of printing subsequent editions of a literary work such as the Furioso. Ariosto’s poem and his other writings, in particular the comedies, provide the author with an abundance of examples.
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  161. Editions and Textbooks
  162.  
  163. There is no shortage of editions of Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso, in which all the major publishing houses seem to have made some investment. The scholarly achievement of Debenedetti and Segre’s edition (Ariosto 1960) represents the culmination of earlier painstaking labor by Debenedetti, whose Laterza edition (Ariosto 1928) is the foundation of the later publication. Segre’s edition (Ariosto 1964) made very few changes to their text in his Furioso, subsequently reprinted many times. Ariosto 1982 provides a commentary based on Ariosto 1960. Ariosto 2006 restores the 1516 edition of the Furioso in a magisterial edition that equals the attentive textual and bibliographical work of previous scholars such as Debenedetti and Segre. The scholastic anthologized edition of the Furioso by Waley (Ariosto 1975) is a handy text for eager students with some command of Italian. Ariosto’s minor works finally received significant attention in the 20th century. Segre’s edition (Ariosto 1954) provides the standard text of the Cinque canti and the starting place for later texts of the Satires. The edition of the Commedie, Volume 4 of Tutte le opere di Ludovico Ariosto (Ariosto 1974), under Segre’s general direction, is the standard text for consultation. Volume 3 of Tutte le opere di Ludovico Ariosto (Ariosto 1984) contains the standard edition of the Satires (substantially revised text of Ariosto 1954), Erbolato, and Lettere.
  164.  
  165. Ariosto, Ludovico. Orlando Furioso. 3 vols. Edited by Santorre Debenedetti. Bari, Italy: Laterza, 1928.
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  167. Debenedetti was the great-uncle of Cesare Segre, whose edition is foundational for the work of later textual critics of the Furioso, especially Ariosto 1960 and Ariosto 1964.
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  169. Ariosto, Ludovico. Opere minori. Edited by Cesare Segre. Milan and Naples: Ricciardi, 1954.
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  171. The standard texts of Cinque canti and Satires. With a judicious anthology of Ariosto’s lyric poems in Italian and Latin (with Italian translation), some letters, and the four comedies. Valuable also for Lanfranco Caretti’s commentary and critical notes on Orlando Furioso.
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  173. Ariosto, Ludovico. Orlando Furioso secondo l’edizione del 1532 con le varianti delle edizioni del 1516e del 1521. Edited by Santorre Debenedetti and Cesare Segre. Bologna, Italy: Commissione per i Testi di Lingua, 1960.
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  175. The modern edition that allows one to read the text in the context of the three editions printed during the author’s lifetime and take into account the author’s various changes. Essential for scholarly work.
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  177. Ariosto, Ludovico. Orlando Furioso. In Tutte le opere di Ludovico Ariosto. Vol. 1. Edited by Cesare Segre. Milan: Mondadori, 1964.
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  179. First of a proposed five-volume set of the complete works (the set was never completed), based on the Debenedetti and Segre text of Ariosto 1960 (with slight changes). Excellent notes and introduction.
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  181. Ariosto, Ludovico. Commedie. In Tutte le opere di Ludovico Ariosto. Vol. 4. Edited by Angela Casella, Gabriella Ronchi, and Elena Varasi. Milan: Mondadori, 1974.
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  183. Standard Italian text of Ariosto’s plays with excellent notes and critical apparatus.
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  185. Ariosto, Ludovico. Orlando Furioso: A Selection. Edited by Pamela Waley. Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 1975.
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  187. Scholastic edition of the Italian text with introduction, notes, vocabulary glosses, and a guide to orthographic and linguistic features in English.
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  189. Ariosto, Ludovico. Orlando Furioso. 2 vols. Edited by Emilio Bigi. Milan: Rusconi, 1982.
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  191. The best commentary (based on the text in Ariosto 1960) on Ariosto’s understanding of the Latin tradition, classical and humanist.
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  193. Ariosto, Ludovico. Tutte le opere di Ludovico Ariosto. Vol. 3. Edited by Cesare Segre. Milan: Mondadori, 1984.
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  195. Standard Italian texts of the works collected in this volume: Satire, edited by Cesare Segre; Erbolato, edited by Gabriella Ronchi; Lettere, edited by Angelo Stella. Includes other minor prose works, such as record books from Ariosto’s time in the Garfagnana and texts of eight proclamations that Ariosto drafted for public display as provincial governor. Indispensable notes, indexes, and introductions and a handy map.
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  197. Ariosto, Ludovico. Orlando Furioso secondo la princeps del 1516. Edited by Marco Dorigatti with Gerarda Stimato. Florence: Leo S. Olschki, 2006.
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  199. A restoration of the original text of the 1516 edition, with a lengthy introduction of 180 pages. In a combination of analytical, descriptive, and historical bibliographical research, Dorigatti produces the best text available of the first edition.
  200. Find this resource:
  201. Online Resources
  202.  
  203. Digitized texts of all of Ariosto’s works, even the minor lists and record books from his days in the Garfagnana, are online at Biblioteca Italiana, in the dependable project organized and run by a scholarly team at the University of Rome “La Sapienza.” The Furioso and Satires, along with introductory material on the author and his time, also can be found online at Ludovico Ariosto, Biblioteca della Letteratura Italiana (organized by Pianetascuola with Einaudi). An impressive digital archive of images that adorn 16th-century editions of the Furioso can be found at the website L’Orlando Furioso e la sua traduzione in immagini, organized by a team led by Lina Bolzoni, Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa.
  204.  
  205. Biblioteca Italiana.
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  207. Electronic texts of all of Ariosto’s works, including the minor ones.
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  209. Ludovico Ariosto. Biblioteca della Letteratura Italiana.
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  211. Electronic texts of the Furioso and Satires, easy to use, with much introductory material on the author and his time.
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  213. L’Orlando Furioso e la sua traduzione in immagini.
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  215. A digitized collection of the iconographical apparatus that accompanies important editions of the Furioso published in the 1500s, including the Zoppino edition of 1536, Giolito of 1542, Valvassori of 1553, Valgrisi of 1556, and de Franceschi of 1584. Includes a bibliography of critical works on visual arts and Ariosto. See also the website
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  217. Translations
  218.  
  219. The entries in this section include a cluster of translations of the Furioso as well as one entry each on Cinque canti, Satires, prose, and plays. There is still no translation of Ariosto’s lyric poetry from either Italian or Latin, which is a disgrace. Part of the problem is that there is still no definitive edition of either body of verse. John Harington’s translation (Ariosto 1962) is of interest to students of English, specifically Elizabethan, poetry. Allan Gilbert’s translation (Ariosto 1954) offers the most precise version of the Furioso, sensitive to every nuance of the original; Guido Waldman’s translation (Ariosto 2008) provides a workaday version whose narrative reads like a novel; Barbara Reynolds (Ariosto 1977) provides a complete and much better poetic version than David R. Slavitt’s Ariosto 2009. The minor works are well served with the translations of Edmond M. Beame and Leonard G. Sbrocchi (Ariosto 1975), Peter DeSa Wiggins (Ariosto 1976), Alexander Sheers and David Quint (Ariosto 1996), and Dennis Looney (Ariosto 2010).
  220.  
  221. Ariosto, Ludovico. Orlando Furioso. 2 vols. Translated by Allan Gilbert. New York: Vanni, 1954.
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  223. An accurate prose translation arranged by paragraphs that correspond with the stanzas in the original to make it easy to use in consultation with the text in Italian. Good notes and an extraordinarily detailed index.
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  225. Ariosto, Ludovico. Orlando Furioso. Translated by John Harington. Edited by Graham Hough. London: Centaur, 1962.
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  227. The great Elizabethan version, assigned to the translator by his godmother, Queen Elizabeth I, as “punishment” for having circulated a manuscript version of the rather risqué canto 28 of Orlando Furioso among the members of her court. Harington’s translation is also available in an anthologized paperback edited by Rudolf Gottfried (1963; Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1975).
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  229. Ariosto, Ludovico. The Comedies of Ariosto. Translated by Edmond M. Beame and Leonard G. Sbrocchi. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1975.
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  231. Prose translations of all of Ariosto’s plays, including both the prose and the poetic versions of La cassaria (The coffer). Good general introduction on Ariosto and the theater.
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  233. Ariosto, Ludovico. The Satires of Ludovico Ariosto: A Renaissance Autobiography. Translated by Peter DeSa Wiggins. Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 1976.
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  235. A prose version of Ariosto’s satiric terzine with the Italian text en face. Excellent general introduction and helpful prefaces to each of the seven satires with notes.
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  237. Ariosto, Ludovico. Orlando Furioso. 2 vols. Translated by Barbara Reynolds. London: Penguin, 1977.
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  239. Complete version of the poem translated into octave stanzas. Excellent and expansive introduction.
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  241. Ariosto, Ludovico. Cinque canti: Five Cantos. Translated by Alexander Sheers and David Quint. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996.
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  243. Facing-page translation of Ariosto’s substantial narrative fragment, intended as a sequel to the 1516 Furioso but never worked into any subsequent version of the poem. Includes a provocative introduction by Quint, who argues for the work’s status as a poem in its own right that reflects the darker side of internecine politics and intra-Christian conflict in a martial landscape that owes much to the poetry of civil war depicted in Lucan’s Pharsalia.
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  245. Ariosto, Ludovico. Orlando Furioso. Translated by Guido Waldman. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2008.
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  247. Precise complete prose translation, practically word for word. Originally published 1974.
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  249. Ariosto, Ludovico. Orlando Furioso. Translated by David R. Slavitt. Introduction by Charles S. Ross. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2009.
  250. DOI: 10.4159/9780674053519Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  251. A selection of the poem with heavy emphasis given to the first half. In loosely constructed octave stanzas built around lines in iambic pentameter.
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  253. Ariosto, Ludovico. “My Muse Will Have a Story to Paint”: Selected Prose of Ludovico Ariosto. Translated by Dennis Looney. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2010.
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  255. First complete translation in English of Ariosto’s 214 letters. Includes a version of the author’s neglected masterpiece, “Herbal Doctor” (Erbolato), a satirical prose piece that pokes fun at quack doctors and academicians. Includes a concise introduction to situate Ariosto’s prose in the context of his cultural moment.
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  257. Trends in Modern Italian Interpretation
  258.  
  259. Modern Italian criticism of Ariosto begins with Pio Rajna (Rajna 1975), whose work on the medieval sources of the Orlando Furioso corrected what had been a tendency to overemphasize the classical influences on the poem. Croce 1920 responded vehemently against Rajna’s positivism to make a case for the poem’s timeless aesthetic qualities. Pettinelli 1996 maps out the various tendencies in Italian criticism of Ariosto since the 1950s that move between the extremes articulated in Rajna 1975 and Croce 1920. Saccone 1974 and Caretti 1977 argue for a more nuanced understanding of Ariosto’s historical moment against Croce’s disregard of history, literary and otherwise. Delcorno Branca 1973 expands Rajna’s work on medieval sources in a concentrated examination of the theme of interwoven narratives. Bologna 1998 and Zatti 2006 offer global readings of the Furioso in a broad literary historical context with special attention to the work’s literary form. Rivoletti 2014 builds on Zatti’s foundational work on irony and fiction to examine the reception of Ariostan irony in Italy, France, and Germany into the 19th century.
  260.  
  261. Bologna, Corrado. La macchina del Furioso: Lettura dell’Orlando e delle Satire. Turin, Italy: Einaudi, 1998.
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  263. A global reading of the Furioso that appears to follow a fairly traditional format: genesis of the poem, structure of the work, content and themes, models and sources, and so forth. But the analysis is broad and deep, with many references to other authors with whose work Ariosto was in dialogue as well as to later writers in dialogue with him (e.g., Galileo, Leopardi, Calvino).
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  265. Caretti, Lanfranco. Ariosto e Tasso. Turin, Italy: Einaudi, 1977.
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  267. A hodgepodge of pieces written in 1954, 1966, and 1974 in a volume frequently reprinted. Argues forcefully in “Codicillo” (pp. 40–46) for interpreting the three versions of the poem in close connection with the historical context of each moment, thus moving away from Crocean abstractions toward more concrete interpretations.
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  269. Croce, Benedetto. “Ludovico Ariosto.” In Ariosto, Shakespeare e Corneille. By Benedetto Croce, 3–115. Bari, Italy: Laterza, 1920.
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  271. First published in Critica 16 (1918): 65–112 and frequently republished. Arguably the single most influential critical reading of Ariosto in the 20th century. From approximately the 1920s until the 1980s, many Italian critics beholden to Croce’s philosophical aesthetics read the Furioso as an ahistorical and timeless text of cosmic harmony, a perfect example of Renaissance classicism, with Ariosto’s famous irony as the key element in the harmonious totality.
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  273. Delcorno Branca, Daniela. L’Orlando Furioso e il romanzo cavalleresco medievale. Florence: Olschki, 1973.
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  275. A study of the poem’s narrative art that focuses on the poet’s adaptation of the medieval technique of entrelacement, or interweaving, with the theme of enchanted weapons as the prime example. A sophisticated modern application of what one may derive from Rajna 1975.
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  277. Pettinelli, Rosanna Alhaique. “Linee della critica ariostesca dal 1950 ad oggi.” In Metodo e poesie di Ludovico Ariosto e altri studi ariosteschi. Edited by Rosanna Alhaique Pettinelli. By Walter Binni, 423–461. Scandicci, Italy: La Nuova Italia, 1996.
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  279. Introduces the following categories: followers of Croce; students of Ferrarese culture; philological research; textual criticism; stylistic, metrical, and linguistic research; humanism and Ariosto; the chivalric tradition; narratological studies; the impact of the court; the presence of the figurative arts and music in Ariosto; textual bibliography; source criticism; study of the individual characters.
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  281. Rajna, Pio. Le fonti dell’Orlando Furioso. Florence: Sansoni, 1975.
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  283. First published in 1876. Rajna’s incomparable knowledge of medieval Franco-Italian literary culture demonstrated the importance of the medieval narrative traditions underlying the Furioso. His special contribution was to note that Matteo Maria Boiardo’s Innamoramento di Orlando was itself a sophisticated blend of Arthurian romance, Carolingian epic, and classical culture.
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  285. Rivoletti, Christian. Ariosto e l’ironia della finzione: La ricezione letteraria e figurativa dell’Orlando Furioso in Francia, Germania e Italia. Venice: Marsilio, 2014.
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  287. The most comprehensive study to date of Ariostan irony—what it is, how it is deployed in the Furioso, and how readers responded to it from the 16th century to the romantic period.
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  289. Saccone, Eduardo. Il soggetto del Furioso e altri saggi tra quattro e cinquecento. Naples: Liguori, 1974.
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  291. Against the Crocean notion of cosmic harmony, this critic reads key episodes (Cloridano and Medoro; Rodomonte and Isabella) and interprets the juxtaposition of major characters (Orlando and Rodomonte) to highlight the poem’s emphasis on contraries that cannot be reconciled. Like Caretti, he is sensitive to the differences among the three editions of the poem. A fundamental essay for readings of the poem in North America in the generation to follow.
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  293. Zatti, Sergio. The Quest for Epic. Edited by Dennis Looney. Translated by Sally Hill with Dennis Looney. Introduction by Albert Russell Ascoli. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2006.
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  295. Now classic essays that combine Italian academic perspectives on Ariosto with those of North America, where the critic has often been a visiting professor. Discussion of the Furioso as a form between the genres of romance and epic, the theme of the quest, the value of poetic truth in the context of fiction and irony, and the Cinque canti as a poem that represents the chivalric world that Ariosto sees disintegrating around him.
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  297. Trends in Modern American Interpretation
  298.  
  299. While comments in Pettinelli 1996 (cited under Trends in Modern Italian Interpretation) are applicable to categories of critical trends in North America as well as Italy, the development of the source studies of positivism into new kinds of intertextual analysis distinguishes American criticism on Ariosto, especially the Furioso, in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. We move from the limitations of simply identifying the borrowed smaller parts that make up the new whole to broader examinations of how and why such borrowings occur and matter. The idiosyncratic reading of the Furioso’s response to classical Antiquity in Carne-Ross 1966, while not always directly imitated, caught the attention of many critics to follow, for example, Wiggins 1986, Looney 1996, and Zatti 2006 (cited under Trends in Modern Italian Interpretation). Wiggins 1986 focuses on how the poet uses intertextual allusions to develop characters in the Furioso, whereas Looney 1996 and Zatti 2006 consider questions of narrative design. Marinelli 1987 and Carroll 1997 focus on Ariosto’s intertextual borrowings from humanistic texts in the classical philosophical tradition. Javitch 1991 looks at the question of classicism from a different perspective by considering how the interest in new vernacular classics in the 16th century influenced the reading of the Furioso. Ascoli 1987 offers a complete reading of the Furioso in dialogue with readings promoted by Croce and his followers around the middle of the 20th century but moving beyond them with his proposal that the poem embodies crisis and evasion. Cavallo 1992 summarizes the crucial half decade of criticism in which Ascoli’s work emerges. Looney 2013 argues for the importance of Ariosto’s Erbolato as a critique of the intellectual climate in which the poet was working.
  300.  
  301. Ascoli, Albert Russell. Ariosto’s Bitter Harmony: Crisis and Evasion in the Italian Renaissance. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1987.
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  303. Seminal work that reinterprets Croce’s essay on Ariosto (Croce 1920, cited under Trends in Modern Italian Interpretation) along lines intimated in Saccone 1974 (cited under Trends in Modern Italian Interpretation), arguing that the Furioso is a poem of crisis, including that of language and referentiality itself. Ascoli’s work has influenced a host of subsequent readings of the Furioso that draw attention to the poem’s problematic narrative structure, its threatened thematic coherency, and its linguistic polish and lack thereof.
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  305. Carne-Ross, D. S. “The One and the Many: A Reading of Orlando Furioso, Cantos 1 and 8.” Arion 5.2 (1966): 195–234.
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  307. Also see “The One and the Many: A Reading of the Orlando Furioso,” Arion, n.s., 3.2 (1976): 146–219; “Three Pieces from Ariosto,” Arion, 3d ser., 8.3 (2001): 1–31. In these close readings from the first third of the poem, the critic argues that the aesthetic quality and style of the verse create a vernacular classic so monumental that modern readers may not be able to make sense of it and argues controversially that Ariosto’s ending in the 1532 edition, indeed the final third of the poem, is botched.
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  309. Carroll, Clare. The Orlando Furioso: A Stoic Comedy. Tempe, AZ: Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies, 1997.
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  311. Detailed reading of the poem that makes a case for its Stoic sources, following to some extent a path set by Marinelli 1987. Stoicism provides a conceptual vocabulary for discussing the role of the narrating poet, who gives voice to the poem’s famous irony and elusive truth. Much attention to patterns and structures over the arc of the entire narrative design.
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  313. Cavallo, Jo Ann. “L’Orlando Furioso nella critica anglo-americana, 1986–1991.” Lettere Italiane 45 (1992): 129–149.
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  315. A review of the major monographic studies in English over this period, of which there was at least one per year, that situates them into several categories: intertextuality, allegory, characters, and sociohistorical context.
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  317. Javitch, Daniel. Proclaiming a Classic: The Canonization of Orlando Furioso. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1991.
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  319. A study of the debate that raged during the 16th century over the Furioso’s canonicity. The author also examines how this process contributed to the reevaluation of the vernacular language as an adequate linguistic vehicle for epic and other kinds of high literature. Klaus W. Hempfer, Letture discrepanti (Modena, Italy: Panini, 2004; translation of Diskrepante Lektüren, 1987) makes some similar points about canonization.
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  321. Looney, Dennis. Compromising the Classics: Romance Epic Narrative in the Italian Renaissance. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1996.
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  323. An examination of narrative strategies employed by the three poets of the Ferrarese Renaissance—Matteo Maria Boiardo, Ariosto, and Torquato Tasso—and how they renovated the popular genre of romance through their imitation of classical epic, with emphasis on Ariosto.
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  325. Looney, Dennis. “Ariosto’s Dialogue with Authority in the Erbolato.” MLN 128.1 (January 2013): 20–39.
  326. DOI: 10.1353/mln.2013.0002Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  327. This essay argues that Ariosto used the Erbolato, a work in Italian probably written near the end of his life between 1530 and 1533, to defend his youthful decision just after the beginning of the new century to turn away from the philological world of his humanist contemporaries with its focus on scholarship and the composition of verse in Latin to pursue a different kind of learning better expressed in the vernacular.
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  329. Marinelli, Peter V. Ariosto and Boiardo: The Origins of Orlando Furioso. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1987.
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  331. An extended reading of the poem’s intertextuality as regards Matteo Maria Boiardo, Plato, Lucian, Virgil, and the Christian tradition, especially the Pauline letters. The critic considers Ariosto’s role in the revival of Platonism in his Ferrarese setting and how the character Astolfo becomes the protagonist in a Neoplatonic philosophical comedy within the poem.
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  333. Wiggins, Peter DeSa. Figures in Ariosto’s Tapestry: Character and Design in the Orlando Furioso. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986.
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  335. One of the first of several critical explorations of characters in the Furioso and in the literary tradition from which it emerged. See, for example, Michael Sherberg, Rinaldo: Character and Intertext in Ariosto and Tasso (Palo Alto, CA: ANMA Libri, 1993).
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  337. Gender in Ariostan Studies
  338.  
  339. Like the study of intertextuality, the study of gender and sexuality in Ariosto, broadly understood, has marked much of the most provocative American criticism in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. An early voice is Durling 1965, which provides a lucid discussion of the querelle des femmes (the status of women) and its impact on Ariosto’s Furioso. Tomalin 1982 and Robinson 1985 examine the theme of the woman warrior in Ariosto and other early modern poets. McLucas 1988, Finucci 1992, and Shemek 1998, inspired by Robert M. Durling’s example and building on the literary and historical research of Benson 1992, among others, constitute comprehensive studies on the relationship between gender and genre in the Furioso. They have shown how early modern Italian culture understood the former category and how the understanding of gender affected the use of genre, exploring specifically the foundational role that Ariosto’s poem played in the 16th-century debate on the status of women, the querelle des femmes. MacCarthy 2007 weighs the various conflicting views of women that emerge from Ariosto’s Furioso, whereas DeCoste 2009 updates the work of its predecessors by focusing on the passages in Ariosto’s poem that look at female same-sex desire. Whereas some critics (Tomalin, Benson, McLucas) have pointed to the importance of gender in Ariosto’s poem and others (Shemek, Finucci) have paired the questions of gender and genre, Stoppino 2012 is the first critic to look carefully at the potential combination of gender and source criticism/intertextuality. See also the Oxford Bibliographies article “Women and Learning.”.
  340.  
  341. Benson, Pamela Joseph. The Invention of the Renaissance Woman: The Challenge of Female Independence in the Literature and Thought of Italy and England. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1992.
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  343. Half the book deals with the Italian humanist and vernacular discussion of the woman, half with England. Of the Italian section, two chapters look at Ariosto’s poem’s engagement with the debate on the role and value of woman in society. Ariosto defends the role of women and tries to reform his reader’s potential misogynistic perceptions.
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  345. DeCoste, Mary-Michelle. Hopeless Love: Boiardo, Ariosto, and Narratives of Queer Female Desire. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2009.
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  347. A reading of Matteo Maria Boiardo and Ariosto that studies how each poet presents tales of female homosexuality and transvestism in the context of their respective narrative poems. Careful examination of the Bradamante-Fiordispina tale left incomplete in Boiardo, which Ariosto brings to completion in unexpected ways. The theoretical perspective at play is feminist and queer.
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  349. Durling, Robert M. The Figure of the Poet in Renaissance Epic. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1965.
  350. DOI: 10.4159/harvard.9780674330634Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  351. Highly influential work that looks at the development of the figure of the narrating poet in Horace, Ovid, Geoffrey Chaucer, Petrarch, Matteo Maria Boiardo, Ariosto, Torquato Tasso, and Edmund Spenser. The substantial chapter on Ariosto includes a section on the querelle des femmes with readings of the most pertinent passages in the Furioso.
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  353. Finucci, Valeria. The Lady Vanishes: Subjectivity and Representation in Castiglione and Ariosto. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1992.
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  355. A psychoanalytic examination of women in Ariosto’s Furioso (five chapters) and Baldassare Castiglione (three chapters). Although some of Ariosto’s women characters resist the masculinist ideology of Renaissance culture, in the end they must comply with the social order or else be expelled (e.g., Angelica), or they must accept their female role (e.g., Bradamante as bride) and thus be brought in line.
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  357. MacCarthy, Ita. Women and the Making of Poetry in Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso. Leicester, UK: Troubador, 2007.
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  359. An exploration of female characters in the Furioso, almost as if they constituted a theme unto themselves, that considers Alcina, Angelica, Marfisa, Olimpia, and Bradamante. The argument opens with an analysis of the many poems that touch on women.
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  361. McLucas, John C. “Amazon, Sorceress, and Queen: Women and War in the Aristocratic Literature of Sixteenth-Century Italy.” Italianist 8 (1988): 33–55.
  362. DOI: 10.1179/ita.1988.8.1.33Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  363. A snippet of the author’s dissertation, “Ariosto and the Androgyne: Symmetries of Sex in the Orlando Furioso” (PhD diss., Yale University, 1983, abstract in DAI, 44, 1984, 2784A), which was one of the first examinations of the categories of gender as presented and developed in Ariosto’s narrative poetry.
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  365. Robinson, Lillian S. Monstrous Regiment: The Lady Knight in Sixteenth-Century Epic. New York: Garland, 1985.
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  367. Robinson challenges the assumption in Tomalin 1982 that the representation of powerful women necessarily implies that there were powerful women who were involved in politics at the time. She makes the striking point that while the male knights in the Furioso remain tied to the antiquated, even if venerable, chivalric code, Bradamante and Marfisa act out the actual political values of early modern Italy. The two women point toward modernity.
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  369. Shemek, Deanna. Ladies Errant: Wayward Women and Social Order in Early Modern Italy. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1998.
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  371. An interdisciplinary study that considers the representation of women in Ariosto’s Furioso against the backdrop of early modern anxiety about empowered women who transgress boundaries. From the role of prostitutes in Ferrarese culture to the characters of Ariosto’s poem, especially Angelica and Bradamante, Shemek examines how femininity threatens hierarchy and order. The study explores how gender and genre align.
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  373. Stoppino, Eleonora. Genealogies of Fiction: Women Warriors and the Dynastic Imagination in the Orlando Furioso. New York: Fordham University Press, 2012.
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  375. A study of the intersection of genre, gender, and genealogy in the Furioso. Stoppino’s comprehensive reading of the cantari and chivalric texts of the 14th and 15th centuries and how Ariosto used them provides a salutary corrective to the academic obsession with classical sources. The focus on dynastic marriage, which is of great concern and interest to Ariosto’s Estense patrons and to other courtly readers among his readership, is simultaneously a way to talk about gender and intertextuality, about the gendering of how Ariosto makes choices in the construction of his poem.
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  377. Tomalin, Margaret. The Fortunes of the Warrior Heroine in Italian Literature: An Index of Emancipation. Ravenna, Italy: Longo, 1982.
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  379. A survey of the development of the warrior maiden, juxtaposed at the beginning of the argument with the donna angelicata. For the author, the peak of the warrior woman’s fortunes is with Ariosto’s Marfisa, a Renaissance version of the classical virago, an independent woman who holds her own in the martial realm of masculinity.
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  381. Ariosto and the Arts
  382.  
  383. Lee 1977 examines the Furioso as a source of inspiration for European illustrators and painters from the 16th century to the 19th, including Annibale Carraci, Guido Reni, Peter Paul Rubens, Nicolas Poussin, and Giovanni Battista Tiepolo. Darnell and Weil 1984 argues provocatively that the Furioso inspired the design of a decorative garden in the mid-16th century. Gnudi 1994 suggests that this interest in Ariosto’s poem as a source may derive in part from the poem’s own attention to art. It contains many ecphrases (e.g., in cantos 3, 33, 42, 46), and it includes a detailed description of a woman (7.11–15) that became a prominent example in subsequent theoretical discussions of descriptive poetry (Ludovico Dolce’s Dialogo della pittura [Dialogue on painting, 1557] and Gotthold Ephraim Lessing’s Laokoon [1766]). The poem also famously praises nine contemporary artists at 33.2. The 1532 edition is decorated with a woodcut portrait of Ariosto, supposedly based on a drawing by Titian (Dorigatti 2008). The illustrations in the editions of Gabriel Giolito (1542) and Francesco de’ Franceschi (1584) are especially handsome but they are just the tip of the iceberg as we learn from Bolzoni, et al. 2010 and Caracciolo and Rossi 2013. The historiated letters in printed editions of the 16th century are also worthy of study (see Nardelli Petrucci 1991). Caneparo 2014 documents that as the popularity of the Furioso spread across Italy in the 16th and 17th centuries, frescoes inspired by the poem were created to adorn the interiors and exteriors of buildings throughout the peninsula. In the 1780s Jean-Honoré Fragonard prepared more than 150 drawings for a volume that was never published (see Fragonard 1945). A noteworthy later edition contains more than five hundred drawings by Gustave Doré (see Doré 1980), with other French artists highlighted in Jeanneret and Preti-Hamard 2009. Anonymous artisans have used the poem for decorating everything from ceramics and weavings of the late Renaissance to the carts and marionettes of Sicilian folk art. in the 19th and 20th centuries. Paoli and Preti 2012 examines the influence of the Furioso on a variety of artistic media.
  384.  
  385. Bolzoni, Lina, Serena Pezzini, and Giovanna Rizzarelli, eds. “Tra mille carte vive ancora”: Ricezione del Furioso tra immagini e parole. Lucca, Italy: Maria Pacini Fazzi editore, 2010.
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  387. Nineteen essays that examine the production, tradition, and reception of the illustrated editions of the Furioso, including detailed bibliographical descriptions of the most important 16th-century illustrated editions: Zoppino, Giolito, Valvassori, Valgrisi, and Francesco de’ Franceschi.
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  389. Caneparo, Federica. “Di molte figure adornato”: L’Orlando furioso nei cicli pittorici tra Cinque e Seicento. Milan: Officina libraria, 2014.
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  391. An exhaustive study of fresco cycles from the 16th and 17th centuries in the Italian peninsula based on Ariosto’s Furioso. A convincing case is made that the vast quantity of frescoes produced across Italy, especially in the areas to the north approaching the Alps, is further evidence of the canonization of Ariosto’s poem as a classic.
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  393. Caracciolo, Daniela, and Massimiliano Rossi. Le sorti d’Orlando: Illustrazioni e riscritture del Furioso. Lucca, Italy: Maria Pacini Fazzi editore, 2013.
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  395. A collection of fifteen essays, some of which derive from the work to create the database of images dependent on the Furioso (see L’Orlando Furioso e la sua traduzione in immagini, cited under Online Resources). The essays consider the reception and influence of the major Venetian illustrated editions of the Furioso.
  396. Find this resource:
  397. Darnall, Margaretta J., and Mark S. Weil. “Il Sacro Bosco di Bomarzo: Its Sixteenth-Century Literary and Antiquarian Context.” Journal of Garden History 4.1 (1984): 1–94.
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  399. A provocative essay on the gardens at Bomarzo, Parco dei Mostri, outside Viterbo, Italy, built in the middle of the 16th century by the Orsini family of Rome to re-create, according to the authors, a three-dimensional reading of the Furioso. One walks through the narrative over several acres amid several dozen statues and monuments.
  400. Find this resource:
  401. Doré, Gustave. Doré’s Illustrations for Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso: A Selection of 208 Illustrations. New York: Dover, 1980.
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  403. Affordable edition of the powerful illustrations completed in 1879. Doré understands Ariosto’s ironic humor as well as any commentator or interpreter.
  404. Find this resource:
  405. Dorigatti, Marco. “Il volto dell’Ariosto nella letteratura e nell’arte del Cinquecento.” In Special Issue: Ludovico Ariosto: Nuove prospettive e ricerche in corso. Edited by Lina Bolzoni, Maria Cristina Cabani, and Alberto Casadei. Italianistica 37.3 (2008): 147–157.
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  407. Essay on the iconographic treatment, ever more classicizing, of Ariosto himself in publications of his works over the 1500s.
  408. Find this resource:
  409. Fragonard, Jean-Honoré. Drawings for Ariosto. New York: Pantheon, 1945.
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  411. With essays by Mongan, Hofer, and Seznec. Hofer’s essay on illustrated editions of Ariosto stands out in this fine volume (pp. 27–40). With 137 plates.
  412. Find this resource:
  413. Gnudi, Cesare. “L’Ariosto e le arti figurative.” In Signore cortese e umanissimo: Viaggio intorno a Ludovico Ariosto. Edited by Jadranka Bentini, 13–47. Venice: Marsilio, 1994.
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  415. The definitive essay on Ariosto and the figurative arts, originally published in 1974, reprinted in this catalogue to accompany the exhibition of the same name as the volume, Reggio Emilia, 5 March–8 May 1994.
  416. Find this resource:
  417. Jeanneret, Michel, and Monica Preti-Hamard, eds. Imaginaire de l’Arioste, l’Arioste imaginé. Montreuil, France: Gourcuff Gradenigo, 2009.
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  419. Catalogue to the exhibition of the same name held at the Louvre, 26 February–18 May 2009. Fine opening essay by Jeanneret, complemented by Preti-Hamard’s catalogue of books, drawings, and paintings, most of them by French artists, for example, Jean-Auguste Ingres, Eugène Delacroix, Gustave Moreau, and Antoine-Louis Barye.
  420. Find this resource:
  421. Lee, Rensselaer W. Names on Trees: Ariosto into Art. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1977.
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  423. An examination of how painters from the publication of the poem in the early 16th century into the 19th rendered the story of Angelica and Medoro. Touches on Nicolas Poussin, Guercino, Marco Ricci, Giovanni Battista Tiepolo, and Benjamin West, among others.
  424. Find this resource:
  425. Nardelli Petrucci, Franca. La lettera e l’immagine: Le iniziali “parlanti” nella tipografia Italiana, secc. XVI–XVIII. Florence: Leo S. Olschki, 1991.
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  427. A study of the historiated letters found most often at the top corners of opening pages that “talk” or relate a myth or legend or story in the emblematic shorthand of images, which were printed and reprinted in early modern Italian publishing. Because printed editions of Ariosto are so prominent at the time, the printing history of his works is alluded to throughout.
  428. Find this resource:
  429. Paoli, Michel, and Monica Preti, eds. L’Arioste et les arts. Introduction by Gianni Venturi. Paris: Musée du Louvre, 2012.
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  431. A collection of twenty essays that considers the influence of the Furioso on a variety of artistic media, including drawing, engraving, frescoes, sculpture, ceramics, opera, theater, and gardens.
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