Orlando Furioso (The Frenzy of Orlando)
by Lodovico Ariosto
Lodovico Ariosto (1474-1533) was a minor nobleman and courtier in the northern Italian duchy of Ferrara. His family’s fortunes wer...
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In the following essay, Marinelli stresses the influence of Neoplatonist writers on the themes and structure of Orlando furioso.
He was altogether outside the philosophy of the Renaissance, whether...
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In the following excerpt, Ascoli documents the interplay of influence between Renaissance texts, noting the treatment of Hercules in Orlando furioso.
The first impulse of this reader and this readi...
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In the following essay, Javitch examines the critical reception of Orlando furioso in the sixteenth century to illustrate the growing significance of Neoclassical ideas.
The many actions, character...
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In the following essay, Shapiro details the role of repetition and doubling in achieving apparently contradictory goals in Orlando furioso.
My previous chapter referred to the “binary form o...
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In the following excerpt, Morgan considers the relationship of Cinque Canti to Ariosto's more famous work, Orlando furioso.
Orlando Furioso has been known to the English-speaking world for c...
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In the essay that follows, Finucci compares Isabella to Medusa and posits that Isabella's self-willed death in Orlando furioso reaffirms gender roles and social power relations.
In Orlando f...
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In the following essay, Reynolds lays out the key theories of seventeenth-century literary critics while reflecting on Galileo Galilei's views on Orlando furioso.
It is clear that in his lit...
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In the following essay, Kress surveys the changing critical reception of Orlando furioso among nineteenth-century French critics.
By tracing the ideas presented within the many critical assessments...
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In the following essay, Hoffman explores Ariosto's apparent conflict between idealistic honor and pragmatic political practices by focusing on canto 26 of Orlando furioso.
Insofar as the Orl...
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In the following excerpt originally published in 1594, Tasso discusses Orlando furioso in terms of the Aristotelian concept of epic unit.
[The poet] must see to it that his fable (by fable I mean t...
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In the following selection, Martinez examines Homer's Odyssey as a source for Ariosto's Orlando furioso and compares the journeying and homecoming of the poet-narrator of the Furioso wit...
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In the following essay, Finucci offers a psychoanalytic reading of gender and disguise in Canto 28 of Ariosto's Orlando furioso, and finds that gender identities were not clearly defined and th...
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In the following essay, Prior suggests that the Orlando furioso is an overlooked source for Othello.
Did Shakespeare read Italian? Most of the evidence that he did comes from Othello. His principal...
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In the following excerpt, Hazlitt compares Orlando furioso with Torquato Tasso's Jerusalem Delivered.
[Ariosto's excellence is] infinite grace and gaiety. He has fine animal spirits, ...
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In the following essay, Adams suggests that the genre-shifting, playful subversiveness of Orlando furioso makes clear the limitations of a contemporary literary criticism and academic discourse.
No...
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In the following essay, Lee analyzes how a 1591 English translation of Ariosto's Orlando furioso both deliberately misinterprets critical elements of the work and demonstrates how the Elizabeth...
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In the following essay, Bellamy considers the ways in which Orlando furioso both conforms to European categories of allegory and epic and subverts its own allegorical and epic genres through ironic co...
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In the following essay, Kisacky considers the significance of magic in a chivalric context in Boiardo's Orlando Innamorato and Ariosto's Orlando furioso.
The distinction between magic...
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In the following excerpt, Quint argues that the “modern” technique of narrative interlace, in which multiple storylines are interwoven, is present in Ariosto's Orlando furioso.
...
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Orlando Furioso (The Frenzy of Orlando)
Critical Essay by Peter V. Marinelli
