Orlando furioso
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Orlando Furioso ("Mad Orlando" or "The Madness of Orlando") is an epic poem written by Ludovico Ariosto in 1516.
It was a "gionta", a sequel to Matteo Maria Boiardo's Orlando Innamorato (Orlando in Love), but it remains quite distant from the other work in that it does not preserve the humanistic concepts of knight errantry. Entering the Cinquecento, the 16th century, it contains instead only an appearance of those themes, at an only superficial level. A work of its time, the Orlando shows more clearly the so-called "culture of the contradiction", which was also in Erasmus and in François Rabelais.
Hegel later considered that the work's many allegories and metaphors demonstrate the fallacy of human senses and judgement, rather than simply to put aside the myth of chivalry.
Orlando Furioso begins with an account of the defeat of Duke Namo in Charlemagne's war. Angelica escapes to meet Rinaldo searching for his horse, Bayardo. Angelica evades Rinaldo, and meets Ferrau. Rinaldo and Ferrau fight, then make a truce and share a horse to seek Angelica. Ferrau seeks his helmet and encounters the ghost of Angelica. Angelica flees, and falls asleep in a grove until awakened by a lamenting knight, Sacripante. Angelica manipulates Sacripante and Sacripante plans to deflower her. Angelica and the embarrassed Sacripante share her horse and encounter Bayardo.
In the Baroque era, the poem was the base of many operas, among which Antonio Vivaldi's opera of the same name and Handel's Alcina, Ariodante and Orlando are the most prominent. The works of John Milton and Cervantes also make reference to the epic.
External links
- Online Medieval & Classical Library [E-text] (William Stewart Rose translation)
- [Free eBook: Orlando Furioso'' (English translation by William Stewart Rose)] at Project Gutenberg
- [Free eBook: Orlando Furioso'' (Italian)] at Project Gutenberg
- ["Orlando Furioso for Dummies"]
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