This volume collects the proceedings of an international conference held at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg in 2017, following the celebrations of the five-hundredth anniversary of the Furioso's first edition (1516). There are nineteen contributions divided into two sections: the first (“Prospettive di lettura del testo”) addresses the pivotal relationship between the fictional and the historical in Ariosto's poem, while the second (“Percorsi nella storia delle ‘letture’”) presents a series of interdisciplinary and comparative approaches.After the introduction by the editor, which discusses the poem's continuous relevance and summarizes the content of the volume (9–21), the first two essays explore Lucian of Samosata's influence on Ariosto. Albert Russell Ascoli focuses on the complex relationship between “istoria” and “vero,” highlighting the harmonizing role of the narrator (25–43). Irene Fantappié analyzes the connections between the Furioso—particularly cantos 34 and 35—the Italian translations of Lucian's Historia vera and Navigium and Leon Battista Alberti's Somnium. Abundant textual evidence shows that Ariosto was not only influenced by their ideas on narration, but also actively paraphrased them (45–68). Christian Rivoletti surveys the “modalità di rinvio alla realtà” (76) in the poem, exploring the complex web of connections woven by the author between external historical reality and internal fictional narrative (69–91). Corrado Confalonieri investigates the character of Lidia, an apparently unreliable narrator, to analyze Alberto Lavenzuola's critique of the Furioso's contradictions—contradictions now perceived as positive, because they allow the poem to be productively ambiguous, thus surpassing what Confalonieri defines as the “indeterminacy principle”: Ariosto's epic simultaneously answers and evades the questions it poses (93–110). Francesco Ferretti analyzes Furioso's anti-didactic attitude and the similarities between the poem and the Satire in shaping the narrator as an “amante folle e geloso” (116). The anti-didactic attitude resonates in Ruggiero's characterization as an immature knight who is ultimately saved by the equally imperfect narrator (111–31). Francesco Brancati compares the Furioso and the Divina commedia, focusing on the contrast between the vertical sense of “tribunale della letteratura” (140) inscribed within Dante's poem and the horizontal, endless “selva” structuring Ariosto's work (133–50). Tina Matarrese explores the theatrical dimension of the poem, highlighting the staging techniques, directions, and theater-related terms it employs, while also emphasizing the performative role of the poet as a canterino (151–167). Eleonora Stoppino analyzes the “esogamia ferrarese” (172), particularly in the Latin epithalamium written for the marriage between Alfonso d'Este and Lucrezia Borgia (1501). Politics features prominently in Ariosto's celebratory poems: the wedding is interpreted both as the acquisition of a spouse and as a loss for the bride's family, court, and city. Along similar lines, Stoppino interprets filiation in the Furioso as a hybrid process in which genealogical structures are often depicted as networks of female figures (169–81). In the last essay of the first section, Sergio Zatti explores Ariosto's relationship with modern literature through his full acknowledgment of mutability as a tenet of reality. The knights’ endless quêtes, Orlando's folly, and even the technique of the entrelacement convey the sense of constant transformation that permeates Italian and European history during the early Cinquecento (183–202).The second section opens with an essay by Daniel Javitch, who discusses the difficult categorization of both Ariosto and Tasso in the context of the Cinquecento debates on what constitutes the epic genre (205–14). Christopher Geekie also focuses on these debates, investigating how both Ariosto and Tasso were alternatively considered as works for the common people or for the elite, depending on their stylistic and linguistic aspects (215–32). Francesco Lucioli examines a curious series of distichs from the Furioso recast into entertaining and moralizing mottoes and exchanged as gifts among the Milanese court members during the 1545 Epiphany (233–54). Bernhard Huss probes Ariosto's influence on sixteenth-century French literature: even if the poem is alternatively regarded as a positive or negative model, its presence never wanes, as demonstrated by excerpts from Sebastien Garnier's 1593 Henriade (255–67). Florian Mehltretter's musicological inquiry examines Vivaldi and Handel's operatic strategies in portraying Orlando's folly: the composers address insanity by reshaping it into an infernal katabasis and support this transformation through an appropriate musical language, emphasized by the libretti (269–80). Christina Strunck addresses the pictorial renditions of Furioso in Tiepolo's Villa Valmarana ai Nani, near Vicenza, and Julius Schnorr von Carolsfeld's cycle in the Casino Massimo in Rome. Tiepolo omits Orlando, creating an “ingegnosa messinscena” (286) around the paladin's absence, while von Carolsfeld follows Friedrich Schlegel's interpretation of Ariosto's epic and uses painting in order to unveil Furioso's allegorical truths (281–305). Mario Mancini highlights the proximity between Ariosto and Stendhal, whose abiding love for the Furioso emerges in his letters, novels, and also from similar strategies in shaping the role of the narrator (307–22). Karlheinz Stierle highlights the contribution of the Furioso to the Romantic theoretical discourse. Friedrich Schlegel sees Ariosto as a link between the Medieval and Romantic poetry, while Hegel, who later influenced Francesco De Sanctis as well, interprets Ariosto as founder of the modern novel in opposition to romance (323–36). Maria Cristina Cabani surveys the state of the art concerning Ariosto's octave, providing both a historical perspective on this specific field of study and more circumscribed analyses of the main scholars and approaches (337–52). Finally, Ludwig Fesenmeier analyzes how Furioso is read in modern audiobooks and oral performances, paying particular attention to how the verb-subject structure is performed by readers (353–78).The volume's strengths lie in its variety and the high level of the contributions. The subtitle is particularly well chosen: each essay is meant as a compelling “perspective” aimed at opening new avenues of research. The interdisciplinary approach, particularly evident in the second section, reveals the complexity of Ariosto's epic and casts new light on the Furioso's effect on a European scale and across the centuries. This appropriately balances the more markedly Renaissance- and Italian-based character of the volume's first half. Having different generations of Ariosto scholars engaged in conversation is also an important achievement. The volume highlights the endlessly provocative nature of Ariosto's opus and its constant reach toward new readings, ultimately reminding us that the poem is already moving “oltre” its first half-millennium. All in all, L’‘Orlando furioso’ oltre i cinquecento anni is a highly recommended reading.
Alvise Stefani (Wed,) studied this question.