Reading Order
Orlando Furioso Reading Order
Orlando Furioso (1516, revised 1532) by Ludovico Ariosto is one of the longest and most exuberant poems in European literature — a 38,736-line epic romance in 46 cantos of ottava rima, continuing Matteo Maria Boiardo's unfinished Orlando Innamorato and following the knights of Charlemagne's court in their wars against the Saracens, their quest for love, and the madness of Orlando when he discovers that Angelica, the beautiful Cathayan princess he loves, has given herself to a Moorish foot soldier named Medoro. The poem contains dozens of interwoven plotlines, journeys to the moon, hippogriffs (the flying horse that is half horse, half griffin that gave J.K. Rowling the idea for Buckbeak in Harry Potter), a sorceress who creates armies from the air, a woman warrior named Bradamante whose love for the Saracen Ruggiero is the poem's secondary romance, and one of the most extraordinary scenes in Renaissance literature: the hero's complete madness when he finds Angelica's love tokens for Medoro, and his recovery when Astolfo flies to the moon to retrieve Orlando's lost wits in a bottle. Ariosto wrote for the Este court of Ferrara, and Orlando Furioso is saturated with the aristocratic pleasures of its audience: hunting, warfare, erotic intrigue, elaborate spectacle. But it is also a deeply knowing, self-aware poem that plays ironically with the chivalric tradition it inhabits — the poem's narrator is constantly commenting on the action, changing direction, shifting registers — and that anticipates by centuries many of the techniques of metafiction. Italo Calvino called it one of the greatest works in European literature; Edmund Spenser imitated it directly in The Faerie Queene.
Where to start
Orlando Furioso — Barbara Reynolds's two-volume Penguin translation in prose-poem form is the most readable; Guido Waldman's prose translation is also excellent; the poem is best read in sections rather than straight through.
Complete Orlando Furioso Book List
- 1Buy
Orlando Furioso
Ludovico Ariosto·1516·The poem — Orlando's madness, Bradamante and Ruggiero's love, hippogriffs, the moon, and the chaos of Charlemagne's wars. - 2Buy
Jerusalem Delivered
Torquato Tasso·1581·Tasso's epic of the First Crusade — the more serious-minded contemporary rival to Ariosto's poem; where Ariosto is comic and ironic, Tasso is tragic and Counter-Reformation. - 3Buy
The Faerie Queene (Books I–III)
Edmund Spenser·1590·Spenser's Elizabethan epic — directly imitated from Ariosto; the English Orlando Furioso, in English ottava rima's equivalent (the Spenserian stanza). - 4Buy
Orlando Innamorato
Matteo Maria Boiardo·1483·Boiardo's unfinished poem — the direct predecessor that Ariosto continued; introduces Orlando's love for Angelica. - 5Buy
Don Quixote
Miguel de Cervantes·1605·Cervantes's novel — the parody of the chivalric tradition that Orlando Furioso inhabits; Quixote's library contains romances like Ariosto's. - 6Buy
The Divine Comedy
Dante Alighieri·1320·Dante's epic — the Italian literary tradition that Ariosto inherited and transformed; the contrast between Dante's theological seriousness and Ariosto's irony is itself part of the poem's meaning. - 7Buy
Invisible Cities
Italo Calvino·1972·Calvino's novel — Calvino was one of Ariosto's greatest admirers and the structural playfulness of Orlando Furioso is one source of Calvino's own metafictional experiments. - 8Buy
The Once and Future King
T.H. White·1958·White's Arthurian retelling — the same combination of comic irony and genuine feeling for the heroic world that Ariosto achieved four centuries earlier.
Orlando Furioso — Frequently Asked Questions
What is Orlando Furioso about?
Orlando Furioso weaves together dozens of plotlines set during Charlemagne's wars against the Saracens. The primary plot follows Orlando (Roland), Charlemagne's greatest knight, and his unrequited love for Angelica, the beautiful Cathayan princess; when he discovers she has given herself to a Moorish foot soldier named Medoro, he goes genuinely mad — rampaging across the countryside, destroying everything around him. The secondary romance follows Bradamante, a female Christian warrior, and her love for the Saracen knight Ruggiero. The poem also follows dozens of knights and ladies across the Mediterranean, into the moon, to Alcina's enchanted island, through magical forests and castles, and in and out of elaborate comic and tragic predicaments.
What is the significance of Orlando's madness?
Orlando's madness is the poem's central image and its most memorable invention. When Orlando discovers Angelica's love tokens for Medoro on a shepherd's wall, the certainty of what has happened unmakes him: he tears off his armor, pulls up trees, throws rocks, wanders naked across the countryside and across the sea to Africa, destroying everything around him. The madness is total — Orlando loses his reason, the quality that distinguishes knights from beasts — and its cure is elaborate: Astolfo must ride a hippogriff to the moon, where all lost things are kept, to retrieve Orlando's wits in a vial. When his wits are restored, Orlando returns to the war and kills the Saracen king Agramante. The madness has been read as a satire on courtly love, as a psychological study, and as a structural device that removes the poem's most powerful figure from the action for twenty cantos.
What is the hippogriff in Orlando Furioso?
The hippogriff is one of Ariosto's most famous inventions — a flying creature, half horse and half griffin (itself half eagle and half lion), that the wizard Atlante has bred and trained. The hippogriff is eventually tamed by Ruggiero, who rides it on adventures including a visit to an enchanted island and a rescue (somewhat accidental and quickly reversed) of Angelica from a sea monster. Later, Astolfo rides the hippogriff to the moon to retrieve Orlando's lost wits. J.K. Rowling named Buckbeak, the hippogriff in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, after Ariosto's creature; the name hippogriff itself comes from the Italian ippogrifo.
What is Orlando Furioso's relationship to Don Quixote?
Orlando Furioso belongs to the chivalric romance tradition that Cervantes's Don Quixote (1605) parodies and mourns. Quixote's library contains books like Ariosto's poem — the chivalric romances whose unrealistic adventures have unhinged his mind. Where Ariosto inhabited the chivalric tradition ironically but with genuine love for its pleasures, Cervantes shows what happens when a real person takes the tradition literally. The contrast between Ariosto's knowing, courtly irony and Cervantes's compassionate mockery of his mad knight represents the shift from Renaissance to Baroque, from a world in which the chivalric ideal could still be enjoyed as entertainment to one in which it could only be mourned.
What should I read after Orlando Furioso?
After Orlando Furioso, readers typically turn to Tasso's Jerusalem Delivered (1581), the Counter-Reformation epic that was written in conscious response to Ariosto's irony and that provided the tragic counterpart to Orlando Furioso's comedy. Edmund Spenser's The Faerie Queene (1590–96) is the English imitation, in the Spenserian stanza that corresponds to Ariosto's ottava rima. For Ariosto's source, Boiardo's Orlando Innamorato provides the predecessor poem. For the broader Italian epic tradition, Dante's Divine Comedy is the great predecessor; for the tradition of metafictional play that Ariosto anticipates, Italo Calvino (who was one of Ariosto's greatest admirers) is the modern heir.
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