Ariosto’s Pathway to Posterity (original) (raw)

Ludovico Ariosto faced a cultural landscape peppered with explosive issues, yet he managed to pursue a path to posterity. In the midnineteenth century, statesman Vincenzo Gioberti extolled Ariosto's praises, declaring him divine, the prince of heroic poetry second only to Dante. 1 How Ariosto attained his status as the best-known poet of the Italian Renaissance has been explored by Daniel Javitch, who traced how the Orlando Furioso became legitimized throughout the sixteenth century. Here, I would like to explore aspects of Ariosto's writings, which would seem to create impediments to his glory but do not. The focus will be on matters of religion, and language as it relates to the burlesque code so popular in its day; I will cite other writers of the era, Pietro Bembo, Teofilo and Giovanni Battista Folengo, to provide context for the positions taken by Ariosto. Religious matters One could say that in the fictional realm of the Orlando Furioso, Ariosto took a traditional stance on religion: he set his epic in the time of Charlemagne when Moors had invaded France and throughout the work Christian knights battle pagan knights. The author insists that Christian knights should try to win back the Holy Lands, which are in the hands of dogs (OF 17.73.8; OF 15.99.7-8). These Christian knights 1 "Prossimo all'unico Dante (e chi potria pareggiarlo?), e a niun altro secondo, per la grandezza dell'ingegno, la sublimità e varietà delle imagini, la ricchezza, la spontaneità, la grazia maravigliosa dello stile e della poesia, è Lodovico Ariosto, cui la patria unanime chiamò divino e salutò come principe della cantica eroica," see Vincenzo Gioberti, Introduction to Orlando Furioso, 1854.