Ludovico Ariosto, author of the Orlando Furioso was born in Reggio, Italy,
Sept. 8, 1474. In 1503 he was taken into the service of the Cardinal
Hippolito d'Este, and soon after began the composition of the Orlando
Furioso, which occupied him for eleven years. It was published in 1516,
and brought him immediate fame. Ariosto was so unkindly treated by his
patron that he left him and entered the service of the cardinal's brother,
Alfonso, Duke of Ferrara. By him he was appointed governor of a province,
in which position he repressed the banditti by whom it was infested, and
after a successful administration of three years, returned to Ferrara to
reside. The latter part of his life was spent in writing comedies and
satires, and in revising the Orlando Furioso. He died in Ferrara, June 6,
1533.
The Orlando Furioso is a sequel to Boiardo's Orlando Innamorata, Ariosto
taking up the story at the end of that poem. Its historical basis is the
wars of Charlemagne with the Moors, which were probably confused with
those of Charles Martel. As the Orlando of the poem is the same Roland
whose fall at Roncesvalles in 778 is celebrated in the Song of Roland, its
events must have occurred before that time.
Although the poem is called Orlando Furioso, Orlando's madness occupies a
very small part of it, the principal threads of the story being Orlando's
love for Angelica and his consequent madness, the wars of Charlemagne, and
the loves of Bradamant and Rogero. From this Rogero the family of Este
claimed to be derived, and for this reason Ariosto made Rogero the real
hero of the poem, and took occasion to lavish the most extravagant praises
upon his patron and his family.
With these principal threads are interwoven innumerable episodes which are
not out of place in the epic, and lend variety to a story which would
otherwise have become tiresome. The lightness of treatment, sometimes
approaching ridicule, the rapidity of movement, the grace of style, and
the clearness of language, the atmosphere created by the poet which so
successfully harmonizes all his tales of magic and his occasional
inconsistencies, and the excellent descriptions, have all contributed to
the popularity of the poem, which is said to be the most widely read of
the epics. These descriptions outweigh its faults,--the taking up the
story of Boiardo without an explanation of the situation, the lack of
unity, and the failure to depict character; for with the exception of
Bradamant and Rogero, Ariosto's heroes and heroines are very much alike,
and their conversation is exceedingly tiresome.
The Furioso is written in the octave stanza, and originally consisted of
forty cantos, afterwards increased to forty-six.
The poem is the work of a practical poet, one who could govern a province.
It is marred by an over-profusion of ornament, and contains no such lofty
flights of fancy as are to be found in the Jerusalem Delivered. To this,
no doubt, it owes, in part at least, its great popularity, for the poet's
poem is never the people's poem.