Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Introduction

2018; Johns Hopkins University Press; Volume: 133; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1353/mln.2018.0002

1080-6598

Leslie Zarker Morgan, April Oettinger, John C. McLucas,

Renaissance and Early Modern Studies

Introduction Leslie Zarker Morgan, April Oettinger, and John C. McLucas 2016 marked the 500th anniversary of Ludovico Ariosto’s first publication of the Orlando Furioso, in 40 cantos, at Ferrara. Throughout the world, scholars, students and poets celebrated Ariosto’s lasting achievement and its continuing charms. Four universities in Baltimore, Maryland, joined together to offer their contribution: Goucher College, the Johns Hopkins University, Loyola University Maryland and Towson University. Invited scholars spoke on topics from before, during and after Ariosto’s time: romance epic precedents, his contemporary influences and his afterlife in other media, such as theater, and of course, in other languages, particularly English. The editors of the present volume hope that it will give the academic community a sense of the rigor, collegiality, broadly speculative range, and engaging good humor which characterized the conference. The keynote speakers opened the presentations by continuing and challenging their own earlier works. David Quint’s talk, “Palaces of Enchantment: the 1516 Orlando Furioso,” examines Ariosto’s complex relation to his predecessor Boiardo, whose Orlando Innamorato he not only continues but also absorbs and critiques. Specifically, Quint ponders the fates of magical palaces and castles as they are erected and leveled throughout the Furioso, and, more broadly, the ends of enchantments in both poems. Fully alert to the tragic overtones of Ariosto’s poem, Quint also details the systematic elimination, in the Furioso, of Boiardo’s protagonists, as the later poet kills them off one by one in a darkening poetic vision. Quint’s readings span past, present, and future—whether reaching forward to Tasso’s continuation of the Estense dynastic epic, or reflecting on the unpredictable, almost magical shifts and dissolutions in the political realities of Ariosto’s time. Eleonora Stoppino is author of Genealogies of Fiction: Women Warriors and the Dynastic Imagination in the Orlando Furioso, which explores aspects of the romance epic tradition in Ariosto’s classic. Here Stoppino reexamines the genealogies she studied in her monograph, starting with [End Page 5] the material evidence of wedding decorations and gifts. She suggests that canto 34 depicts the necessary violence of history and the foundation of a dynasty though important intertexts and contexts from Boccaccio and romance precedents. The role of Lidia in that canto, where Ariosto revisits Dante, also reflects other episodes in Ariosto’s poem (for example, canto 3). However, romance texts contribute to the tale as well, and Ariosto thus can use his Furioso as political commentary. His rewriting, Stoppino suggests, leads the reader to question the apparent message of the story: Ariosto brings violence not only to the woman and her family, but also to the plot of his poem. Charles S. Ross presents his ongoing project of translating Ariosto into English. Ross, an experienced translator of poetic works, including the Thebaid, Boiardo’s Orlando Innamorato and Sydney’s Arcadia into modern English, reflects upon how best to bring Ariosto’s genius into English. He demonstrates the difficulties with previous attempts—others’ and his own—and explains his desire to duplicate the form of the poem without introducing anything extra. From examples of this approach and the reasoning behind it, he proposes his translation of the first canto of Orlando Furioso. Jo Ann Cavallo, author most recently of The World beyond Europe in the Romance Epics of Boiardo and Ariosto and editor of a forthcoming volume Teaching the Italian Renaissance Romance Epic, examines some “foreign” characters and places based on Ariosto’s and Boiardo’s poems in modern puppet theater and maggi (folk operas), particularly in regard to teaching Ariosto and Boiardo by focusing on ways in their themes resonate with discussions of today’s social issues. How do we visualize Angelica, daughter of a sorcerer from the East? Cavallo offers an analysis of the productions from different companies, both physical representation and rhetorical form, that the reader can verify by linking to the videos taken of performances. Angelica’s interactions with Medoro, a “Saracen,” on stage, may surprise both instructors and students. Other topics she examines include Biserta, the Saracen city, and Doralice. Cavallo’s choices, both her exposition in the article and the videos available on her website, eBOIARDO, will certainly enable and enliven...