Reconsidering the Last Part of Orlando

Furioso: Romance to the Bitter End

Daniel Javitch

his essay challenges the belief that Ariostos Orlando furioso takes
an epic turn as it nears its conclusion and abandons many of the
romance features that characterize its first half. I should say, before
reviewing briefly the readings that have established this belief, that I
detect in arguments that the Furioso finally acquires more epic shape
and content a wish to make it into a more serious and dignified poem
than it might appear to be if it were perceived as a chivalric romance
to the end. Although it is not explicitly stated, there still lurks in these
readings a sense of inferiority about chivalric romance, a presumption
that, aside from its erratic and indeterminate structure, the greater
distance of its imaginary world from history, time, and mortality makes
chivalric romance incapable of addressing such grave and potentially
tragic aspects of reality. Also, while these readings ascribe to Ariosto a
desire, in the latter part of his poem, to discipline the wayward aspects
of romance, they presume that this disciplining entails a generic shift
to more epic structure and content.
Actually, D. S. Carne- Ross, the first (at least in Anglo- American
criticism) to propose that as he approaches the end of his poem Ariosto
I wish to thank Giuseppe Sangirardi for his exchange with me about il finale
del Furioso and for sharing an early version of his article Quanti sono i generi
dellOrlando furioso? (see n. 12), to which I am indebted. I am also indebted to my
former student Richard Jenkins, whose term paper critiquing the idea that the Furioso
ultimately turns into an epic inspired me to express my views on this subject.
Modern Language Quarterly 71:4 (December 2010)
DOI 10.1215/00267929-2010- 020 2010 by University of Washington

386

MLQ

December 2010

abandons its erratic romance features for a more epic design, does not
have the mauvaise conscience about romance that I am beginning to
describe. If anything, Carne-Ross laments what he takes to be Ariostos
decision to regiment the poems dispersive plot and to end several of its
futile quests, thereby muting the irreverent, skeptical spirit that made
the poem extraordinary. In the last third of the poem, Carne- Ross
writes, Ariosto begins to move away from his own unique realm of
instability and enters a far more conventional world, one where virtue
is rewarded, actions have ends, and the faithful heart is secure.1 The
poets desire to bring the poem to an eventual close is one reason for
this change. The problem, Carne-Ross continues,
was compounded by the fact that he had no model to show him how
a romance poem of high literary ambition ought to end. There was
no difficulty about the beginning: he had simply to continue from the
point (more or less) where Boiardo had left off. The Orlando Innamorato,
however, is unfinished, hence for his conclusion Ariosto went to the
poem that his society honored beyond all others, the Aeneid, and began
to lead the Furioso to a weighty Virgilian full- stop. . . . The mistake,
which is radical and disastrous, is to graft on to an open- structured
poem a closed- structure ending. (204 5)

David Quints almost contemporaneous account of a narrative and

generic modification in the second half of the Furioso betrays none
of Carne- Rosss disappointment. On the contrary, one senses clear
approval in Quints description of the teleological design and closure
that Ariosto imposes on the Boiardan, digressive and open- ended
romance narrative. Quint sees this transition occurring even earlier
than Carne-Ross, namely, after the destruction of Atlantes palace in
canto 22 (which in the shorter 1516 Furioso, as Quint points out, takes
place in canto 20, right at the poems midpoint). He proposes that the
change should be seen as the major difference between the narrative
structure of the Furioso and that of Orlando innamorato. The impetus
towards closure brings with it, Quint maintains, a new sense of temporality and mortality: The digressive multiple plotlines are cut short
one by one as, from Pinabello to the climactic victim Rodomonte,
1 D. S. Carne- Ross, The One and the Many: A Reading of Orlando Furioso,
Arion, n.s., 3 (1976): 204. The first installment of Carne- Rosss work appeared in
Arion 5 (1966): 195 234.

Javitch

Last Part of Orlando Furioso

387

Boiardos seemingly indestructible heroes are eliminated in epic

combat. The hero dies that the poem may end; conversely, Ariosto,
by putting an end to both the Furioso and the Innamorato, affirms the
reality of death. Quint also argues that the transition marks a generic
shift in the Furioso: Ariosto superimposes a teleological epic structure
upon the digressive romance narrative of Boiardos poem. . . . The
Furioso begins with the romanzo form of the Innamorato until, with the
destruction of Atlantes palace, it jettisons pure romance midway in
order to proceed to an epic closure.2 Quints thesis is provocative, but
its schematization fails to acknowledge how much the matter and also
the form of the second half of the poem, right up to the end, are still
characteristic of the romanzo. Moreover, Quint wants us to believe that
the generic shift he perceives in the second half occurs because Ariosto
is already sensitive to the distinction between romance and epic, and
to the superior status granted epic because of its unity, linearity, and
closure, even though these critical notions did not come to the fore,
as Quint recognizes, until about half a century after Ariosto originally
composed the Furioso.
Sergio Zattis consolidates further the view that Ariosto imposes a
more epic structure near the end (for Zatti, the last fifth) of the poem.
As the title of his study indicates, Zatti wants to locate the Furioso somewhere between romance and epic. But he also argues that it progresses
from romance to epic or, more precisely, that as it moves toward its
epic closure Ariosto gradually reduces, even eliminates, the formal conventions of romance that characterize the first half: for example, the
digression and deferral that contribute to the proliferation of adventures and to the dispersive nature of the poems many plots. Moreover,
according to Zatti, as Ariosto streamlines his narrative and seeks to
bring it to a close, he alters the typical matter of romance: magical
occurrences and interventions are diminished; protagonists are killed;
those who survive no longer scatter but converge as the final victory of
Carlomagnos Christian forces is affirmed and celebrated; and intertextual markers signal una volont di recupero dellepos (a wish to
restore the epic genre). Negli ultimi canti del Furioso, Zatti writes,
2 David Quint, The Figure of Atlante: Ariosto and Boiardos Poem, MLN 94
(1979): 84, 87.

MLQ

388

December 2010

Boiardo cede progressivamente il passo a pi autorevoli modelli:

Dante . . . e sopratutto Virgilio (In the final cantos of the Furioso, the
Boiardo model progressively gives way to more imposing ones: Dante . . .
and above all Virgil).3 The final duel between Ruggiero, the founding
hero of the Estense dynasty, and Rodomonte, the last of the barbarian
enemies, imitates the confrontation at the end of the Aeneid and thus
affirms the affiliation that Ariosto now wants to emphasize between the
Furioso and the archetypal epic poem of antiquity.4
Alberto Casadei also proposes that the strains of both epic and
romance can be discerned in the last segment of the poem, albeit in
its first version. He argues that the last six cantos of the 1516 Furioso
(which ends at canto 40) does not acquire a more epic character overall but reveals a pattern of oscillation fra episodi dal tono Epico (= E)
ed altri pi tipici del Romanzesco (= R) (between episodes epic in tone
to ones more typical of romance).5 To illustrate his claim, Casadei lists
the last fourteen episodes of the 1516 poem and labels them E or R,
respectively. He does observe that the oscillation and equilibrium
between the two generic registers become less perceptible after Ariosto
adds the long account of the rivalry between Ruggiero and Leone to
the 1532 version. Casadei also acknowledges that allinterno di parecchi segmenti lo statuto Epico o Romanzesco non puro (in several
segments the epic or romance constitution is not pure) (73). Although
he is convinced that the distinction between epic and romance can be
used effectively to describe the narrative shifts he perceives, Casadeis
nuanced interpretation makes it apparent how exaggerated the claims
of Carne-Ross, Quint, and Zatti are.
Indeed, they misrepresent Ariostos poetic agenda. To be sure,
Ruggieros killing of Rodomonte at the very end of the poem imitates
the last lines of the Aeneid. The imitation is so noticeable and resonant
in the last octave as to lead some readers to believe that the two poems
Sergio Zatti, Il Furioso fra epos e romanzo (Lucca: Pacini Fazzi, 1990), 29 30.
Colin Burrow is another influential critic who maintains that Ariosto makes
the last part of his poem more Virgilian. The later stages of Orlando furioso, Burrow
seeks to demonstrate, gravitate towards Virgil, and strive to make an equivalent for
the actions and motives of his epic predecessor in the language of chivalry (Epic
Romance: Homer to Milton [Oxford: Clarendon, 1993], 68).
5 Alberto Casadei, Il percorso del Furioso: Ricerche intorno alle redazioni del 1516 e
del 1521 (Bologna: Mulino, 1993), 73.
3
4

Javitch

Last Part of Orlando Furioso

389

share more than the events on their last pages. However, there is no
warrant either for drawing a parallel between the whole of Ariostos
last episode and Virgils or for pushing Ariostos supposed intention to
impose epic shape and closure farther and farther back from the final
octave. I want to demonstrate that Ariosto had no such intention by
considering (1) the anachronism of projecting onto the Furioso a desire
on the authors part to upgrade the romance with which he began to a
more serious, epic poem, and (2) the persistence, not to say the dominance, of romanzo matter and structure in the poems last nine cantos.
The modern readings surveyed here are anachronistic in the sense
that they trace in Ariostos composition generic concerns and distinctions that did not yet confront poets in the early sixteenth century.6
Boiardos and Ariostos chivalric romances reflect a much more ecumenical conception of heroic poetry, conjoining the military epic matter of Carolingian gesta with the solitary knightly quests of Arthurian
romance unproblematically, that is, without the concerns about generic
orthodoxy and purity that presented themselves when genres became
more codified and therefore more separated from one another. The
differences between romance and epic that modern critics claim are
at work in Orlando furioso did not come to the fore as issues in Italian
poetics until about fifty years after the poems first composition, and
did so initially in the debate about the superiority of classically modeled epic to chivalric romance. It was largely the Furioso itself, the bestselling Italian poem of the mid- sixteenth century even though it was
gradually seen not to conform to classical epic models, that caused critical notions about epic and romance to emerge and come into opposition. The debate intensified after Torquato Tassos Gerusalemme liberata
(1581) had provided an Italian model of the kind of heroic poem that
For example, Quint argues that the epic-romanzo distinction which fueled the
sixteenth- century debate over the merits of Tasso and Ariosto would be more properly applied to Ariosto and Boiardo: epic and romance do not so much differentiate
the Liberata from the Furioso as the Furioso from the Innamorato. The Innamorato is
the romanzo of copia and multiplicity, the poem without end. Ariosto superimposes a
teleological epic structure upon the digressive romance narrative of Boiardos poem
(Figure of Atlante, 86 87). Later Quint is more convincing when he discusses the
potentially political nature of this generic opposition in Tassos Gerusalemme liberata
and especially in Ericillas Araucana (Epic and Empire: Politics and Generic Form from
Virgil to Milton [Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993], 182), in part because
these works postdate the first definitions and distinctions between the two genres.
6

MLQ

390

December 2010

the so- called ancients advocated. Tassos poem could also be used to
show, by contrast, the flaws in prior romanzi, including Ariostos.7 This
bias against the romanzo not only marked Tassos own fundamental contributions to epic theory (starting with the Discorsi dellarte poetica, first
published in 1587) but generated some of his directives on how to compose a modern heroic poem. Unwilling to grant the romanzo a separate
generic identity, Tasso presented it instead as a defective, artistically
inept form of heroic poetry. Such disparagement of the romanzo, which
began around 1550, made even its first champions Giambattista
Giraldi and Giovan Battista Pigna and also mid- sixteenth- century
romanzatori defensive and apologetic about its practice. When Ariosto
composed his poem in the first decades of the sixteenth century, however, he certainly did not have the mauvaise conscience about the romanzo
that his Italian successors possessed. The need to make romance conform more to the unified structure of classical epic did not concern
him, as it later did Tasso. Indeed, no Italian heroic poem modeled on
the Homerico-Virgilian paradigm was composed before Gian Giorgio
Trissinos Italia liberata dai Goti (1547 48). As Quint himself acknowledges, Pignas I romanzi, one of the first efforts to define the romanzo as
a separate literary genre, did not appear until 1554. Pigna, by the way,
was also the first to distinguish romanzi from epici.8 Before such generic
distinctions and hierarchization emerged, Italian poets, Ariosto among
them, had composed various instances of chivalric romance.
The claim that Ariosto had incorporated some epic features in the
Furioso was initially made by mid- sixteenth- century editors of the poem
who, to present it as a modern equivalent of Homers and Virgils poems,
sought to affiliate it with them in every way they could.9 To be sure,
See Bernard Weinberg, A History of Literary Criticism in the Italian Renaissance, 2
vols. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1961), 2:954 1073.
8 Pigna, however, made the distinction not to disqualify the romanzo as poetic art
but to legitimize it as a modern alternative to epic. In the third of the prefatory argomenti Pigna states that in tutta lopera si va mostrando in che convengano i romanzi
co gli epici, e in che no; e sempre si fa vedere la cagione perch cos con loro conformi sieno, e perch no (it is demonstrated in the whole work how romance poems
resemble epic poems and how they do not, and always it is shown why romances
conform to them and why they do not) (I romanzi, ed. Salvatore Ritrovato [Bologna:
Commissione per i Testi di Lingua, 1997], 5).
9 See Daniel Javitch, Proclaiming a Classic: The Canonization of Orlando Furioso
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1991), 32 44.
7

Javitch

Last Part of Orlando Furioso

391

Ariosto imitates the Aeneid repeatedly, most notably in the plotline that
deals with the destined union of Bradamante and Ruggiero and with
their DEste descendants. But by privileging the intertextual connections between the Furioso and the Aeneid (and by disregarding Ariostos
greater indebtedness to past Italian and French romanzi), these promoters exaggerated Ariostos incorporation of epic matter. Once critics had
begun to point out (in the 1550s) the numerous violations of Aristotelian and classical epic norms in the Furioso, it was harder to hail it as a
modern epic. Actually, the first codifiers of epic, not wanting to demote
the Furioso to a popular romance, began to suggest that it was a failed
epic and that the failure was largely due to Ariostos unwillingness to
forsake the proliferation of characters and plots that typified romance.
Tasso, for example, maintained that Ariostos poem shared more with
epic than prior romanzi had but that it lacked any generic consistency.10
For Tasso, the inferiority of the Furioso stemmed from Ariostos decision
to conform to the conventions of romance despite the incorporation of
epic features. That the Furioso was a defective mixture of romance and
epic was not expressed before Tassos time. Quints and Zattis readings
can be seen as continuations of this view. To be sure, their appraisal
of Ariostos conflation of genres is more favorable than Tassos. Still,
like most modern readings that resort to the binary opposition of epic
and romance, their work bears traces of the bias against the romanzo.11
10 Ariosto, Tasso writes in the Apologia in difesa della Gerusalemme liberata,
sassomigli a gli epici pi degli altri che avevano scritto innanzi (resembled the
epic poets more than those who had written [romances] before). However, he criticizes Ariosto for composing a poem of indeterminate nature, part romance and part
epic (Prose, ed. Ettore Mazzali [Milan: Ricciardi, 1959], 418).
11 In this essay I have chosen not to address the view that a competition between
romance and epic pervades Orlando furioso, even though this view is connected to
the argument about the poems epic turn. Zatti, for example, prefaces his claim that
Ariosto opts for epic closure with a discussion of such a competition, which he sees
resolved in favor of epic by the end of the poem. Before Zatti, Patricia A. Parker, the
first modern critic to examine the poem in terms of a tension between the claims
of romance and those of epic, indicated as much (Inescapable Romance: Studies in the
Poetics of a Mode [Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1979], 36 38). Her brilliant analysis of error as a structural and thematic principle that partly counters
the Furiosos epic agenda was inspired by the opposition formulated between epic
and romance by late- sixteenth- century critics of the romanzo (19 20). In a synopsis of
modern interpretations of the Furioso Albert Russell Ascoli reveals how accepted that
view has become when he speaks of Ariostos debts to Boiardos long chivalric poem
Orlando Innamorato and to Virgils imperial epic, which furnishes the model for

392

MLQ

December 2010

Quint, for example, implies that the epic shape and direction he discerns in the last part of Ariostos poem is for the better. Unlike CarneRoss, who considers the imposition of a closed- structure ending a
disastrous mistake, Quint suggests that the disciplining of the dispersive and confusing structure of romance into a more unified epic shape
that enables closure improves the Furioso and raises its poetic stature.
I contend that this depiction begins to make Ariosto look like Tasso.
However ahead of his time he may have been, Ariosto was not so disturbed by the errant ways of chivalric romance as to want to transform
its basic features.
I have been using the term romanzo and the epithet romanzesco to
identify formal and thematic characteristics of the Furioso, aware that
these generic labels did not enter into critical circulation until more
than twenty years after Ariostos death. They were not used by Ariosto
or his immediate predecessors to describe the kind of poems they composed. It might be more accurate to follow contemporary usage and
resort to labels like libri di battaglia and libri di arme e amore to identify the chivalric poems in ottava rima from Luigi Pulcis Morgante to
Ariostos Furioso.12 These designations are less burdened with the con-

the dynastic fable of Bradamante and Ruggiero, and which competes formally with
Boiardan romance for generic dominance throughout the poem (Ariosto and the
Fier Pastor: Form and History in Orlando Furioso, Renaissance Quarterly 54 [2001]:
489). Among subsequent critics influenced by Parkers and Zattis readings, one finds
also the view that Ariosto plays with the distinction between the genres of epic and
romance. Both views presume not only that he is fully conscious of these generic categories but that his readers, too, could identify them. In a separate essay I intend to
challenge these views by calling into question a dialectic between romance and epic in
the poem, beginning with a reconsideration of the so-called dynastic plotline of Bradamante and Ruggiero, which, despite the Virgilian stamp of its episodes prophesying
the glory of their DEste progeny, remains, overall, the story of her frustrated amorous
quest for him.
12 For contemporary reference to libri di battaglia see Angela Nuovo, I libri di
battaglia: Commercio e circolazione tra quattro e cinquecento, in Boiardo, Ariosto e i
libri di battaglia: Atti del convegno Scandiano-Reggio Emilia-Bologna, 3 6 ottobre 2005, ed.
Andrea Canova and Paola Vecchi Galli (Novara: Interlinea, 2007), 341 58. Giuseppe
Sangirardi considers libri di arme e amore more precise, in part because Ariosto
described himself as an author of an opera in la quale si tratta di cose piacevoli e
delectabeli de arme e de amore when applying to the doge of Venice for a license
to publish his work in 1515. Quando Ariosto presenta il suo libro come unopera
che contiene narrazioni piacevoli darmi e damori, Sangirardi writes, lo fa meno

Javitch

Last Part of Orlando Furioso

393

notations that romanzo has acquired, inasmuch as this label retains to

some degree the sense of opposition to neo-Aristotelian notions of epic
acquired in the later cinquecento and kept alive by some of the most
influential modern Ariosto criticism. It is heuristically useful, nonetheless, to identify Orlando furioso as a romanzo cavalleresco as long as it is
made clear what that designation means. I use romanzo cavalleresco, or
romanzo for short (or the English word romance), to describe a body of
late-fifteenth- and early- sixteenth- century chivalric poetry that includes
Pulcis Morgante, Francesco Cieco da Ferraras Mambriano, Boiardos
Orlando innamorato, and various sequels to Boiardos poem. These narrative poems, composed in ottava rima, observe conventions of writing
about armi and amori that go back in Italy to Boccaccios Teseida but that
also draw on the rich medieval legacy of French chivalric romance.13
The armi range from clashes between opposing armies to duels between
two combatants. The larger conflicts, almost always between Saracen
and Christian foes, allow for the incorporation of military gesta in the
manner of prior Carolingian epic matter. However, duels between
knights and, in general, individual displays of prowess are more prevalent. Armi do not remain separate from amori but are intertwined, in
that love and sexual desire not only inspire knights to perform deeds of
martial prowess but also prompt them to abandon their military obligations and go off on their own quests. In turn, these quests, whether
for love or for glory, take the knights to exotic places and often include
supernatural occurrences and magical interventions.
per definire un genere logico che per inserirsi in una tradizione recente, di cui ha
una percezione empirica. La famiglia a cui Ariosto riconosce la sua appartenenza
[i.e., Orlando innamorato, Morgante, Mambriano, etc.] non esattamente quella del
romanzo cavalleresco e ancor meno quella del romanzo tout court, nozione implicante
unalternativa tra epico e romanzesco che si instaurer pi tardi nel dibattito teorico
(When Ariosto presents his book as a work that contains the pleasant tales of arms and
loves, he does it less to define a logical genre than to inscribe himself in a recent tradition, which he perceives empirically. This family, to which he sees himself belonging,
is not exactly that of chivalric romance, and even less that of the romanzo tout court, a
notion implying an alternative between epic and romance that will be established only
in later theoretical debate) (Quanti sono i generi dellOrlando furioso? Allegoria 21
[2009]: 59).
13 In sixteenth- century Italian arme is used for the plural instead of armi. Thus
Ariostos first lines of the poem: Le donne, i cavallier, larme, gli amori, / le cortesie,
laudaci imprese io canto.

MLQ

394

December 2010

Moreover, these poems share conventions of structure and performance. Arranged in rhymed octaves, Italian poems in this tradition
presented themselves as oral performances or recitations delivered by
conspicuous narrators to sophisticated aristocratic audiences; hence
the canto format, marked by proemi and other narratorial intrusions.
Because there are numerous protagonists in this family of poems, their
stories call for multiple plotlines, which are intertwined. Entrelacement,
as it is now called, requires that the separate narratives be regularly suspended to allow others to resume. These are some of the more notable
common features of the romanzo cavalleresco, and Orlando furioso clearly
possesses them.
Indeed, my basic disagreement with the interpreters who claim
that the last part of Ariostos poem takes an epic turn is to maintain
that it does not, but continues to conform to the generic profile of the
romanzo cavalleresco. True, the narrative is tightened and streamlined
after Orlando is sanitized (in canto 39). Disparate plot strands are
brought together as the campaign against and defeat of Agramante
become shared objectives. Ariostos effort in the last cantos to reduce
the dispersive nature of the poems plotlines by joining them or even
abandoning some of them may be validly interpreted as an effort to give
his poem a more unified, streamlined ending, but there is no reason
to identify this streamlining as an effort to make the poem more epic
as it reaches its close. Such tying up of strands at a poems conclusion
is also characteristic of prior romances. Romances do not always stay
open- ended or defer closure, as modern critics too readily assume.14
One cannot deny that in the last fifth of the poem Ariosto gives

Even though the sequence of the Furioso was disrupted by the insertion of the
long Leone-Ruggiero addition to the 1532 version, Casadei recognized that the consolidation of narrative strands in the penultimate segment of the 1516 Furioso the
meeting of the knights with Ruggiero and the hermit, their return to Paris, the discharge of Senapo and his troops, the return of Astolfo to Paris, and then the festive celebrations at Carlomagnos court, capped by the nuptials of Ruggiero and
Bradamante was a conclusione tipicamente da (conclusion typical of) romanzo
cavalleresco (159). For some useful comments on the way that quest romances often
end namely, with the hero assuming kingship or becoming the leader of the community he rejoins see Helen Cooper, The English Romance in Time: Transforming
Motifs from Geoffrey of Monmouth to the Death of Shakespeare (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 2004), 55 56.
14

Javitch

Last Part of Orlando Furioso

395

more attention to military matters the conflict between the forces of

Agramante and Carlomagno than to the amatory preoccupations of
the protagonists. Still, the amori are by no means forsaken for the armi.
And the fighting that takes place consists mostly of combats between
individual knights, the typical stuff of chivalric romance, rather than
of the clash of armies. Libri di battaglia, one label that contemporaries
gave Boiardos and Ariostos chivalric poems, as well as the poems of
Boiardos other continuators, shows how inaccurate it is to identify the
individual or collective military conflicts in the last fifth of the Furioso
as distinctly epic, since libri di battaglia reminds us that such battling,
whether between individuals or between groups, was perceived as a constitutive thematic feature of these romances in ottava rima. In general,
it can be shown that segments or aspects of the narrative between cantos 38 and 46 that are identified as more epic than romanzeschi belong
to or are characteristic of past chivalric romances.
It is evident that the two prominent narrative segments in the last
five cantos consist of traditional romance matter. At the start of the first
of these segments in canto 42, right after the death of Brandimarte and
Agramante, Rinaldo sets off in search of Angelica, still infatuated with
her because of the incanto produced by drinking from the magical fountain of love (42.29 41). Thanks to his cousin, Malagigi the magician,
who obtains information from a demon, Rinaldo discovers that Angelica has eloped with Medoro. Seized by jealousy, Rinaldo departs for the
Levant after requesting leave from Carlomagno with the excuse that he
is honor-bound to go in search of his steed, Baiardo, which Gradasso
has absconded with contra il dover di cavalier gagliardo (against the
code of worthy knights) (42.42). Leaving aside the role of magic (which
contradicts the general claim that magical interventions are progressively suppressed in the last part of the poem), one can hardly find a
more typical account of the abdication of duty in the pursuit of personal desire in short, the knight- errancy that characterizes romance.
Also, the geography described once Rinaldo has left Paris is representative of the landscape found when knights go off on their adventures. In
chivalric romance such adventures tend to occur on islands or in deep
forests, rivers, fountains, springs, gloomy vales, caves spazi, Marco
Praloran writes when listing them, per eccellenza non sociali, a volte
caratterizati da eventi sopranaturali mervavigliosi (spaces that are,

396

MLQ

December 2010

par excellence, not social, at times marked by marvelous supernatural events).15 These places can virtually all be found in the territory
covered by Rinaldo as he seeks Angelica (42.44 67). In addition to the
locales, a series of romance motifs marks the action: Rinaldo is nearly
overwhelmed by a grotesque monster that lashes its snake tail at him;
he is saved by a mysterious knight who identifies himself as Sdegno
(Disdain) and helps him fall out of love by taking him to drink at the
fountain of hate before disappearing as suddenly as he entered the narrative. Also, the adventures that befall Rinaldo after he is cured of his
infatuation entail a trip down the Po during which he is told fantastic
tales of magic and marital infidelity. Almost nothing in the lengthy
tale of Rinaldos errancy (42.29 43.144) supports the claim that, by
the last fifth of the poem, the romanzesco has been subordinated to epic
military prerogatives.
The second major narrative segment is the account of the rivalry and
friendship of Ruggiero and Leone in cantos 44 46, the most extensive
addition that Ariosto made to the final version of the poem. If he had
wanted to reduce the dispersive nature of his plot and give the last part
of his poem more epic unity and closure, this episode hardly served the
purpose. For it provides an opportunity not only to defer the union of
Bradamante and Ruggiero but also to bring in numerous romance situations and motifs. Ruggieros decision to leave Carlomagnos court and
head for the East to seek his new rival, Leone, in order to defeat him
(as well as his father, the emperor Constantine) resembles numerous
departures of knights- errant in romance on solitary missions to redress
wrongs done to them or others and thereby to augment their fame
and fortune. Ruggiero soon joins the conflict between the Byzantines
and the outnumbered Bulgarians on the side of the latter. While this
military action outside Belgrade may contribute an epic dimension to
the Leone addition, the account is primarily concerned with Ruggieros
extraordinary exploits as he single-handedly routs Constantines army
and turns the Bulgarians near defeat into victory (44.84 95). As Pio
Rajna points out, Le meraviglie operate da Ruggiero presso Belgrado
(XLIV, 78 95) consuonano con quelle che nei vecchi romanzi italiani
15 Marco Praloran, Lo spazio nellOrlando furioso, in Le lingue del racconto: Studi
su Boiardo e Ariosto (Rome: Bulzoni, 2009), 125.

Javitch

Last Part of Orlando Furioso

397

[e.g. la Spagna, c.xv xviii in 8a rima] si fanno compiere nellOriente ai

principali Baroni di Francia. Vediamo spesso costor giungere ad una
citt assediata, ridotta alle ultime strette, e in brevissimo tempo mutar
faccia alle cose, mettere a sbaraglio loste nemica (The marvels carried out by Ruggiero around Belgrade resemble the ones that the chief
barons of France are shown to accomplish in the Orient in the old Italian romances. We often see them joining a besieged city, reduced to
direst straits, and in the shortest time changing the state of affairs and
routing the enemy army).16 Also, the scene of Leone watching, from a
hilltop, the unidentified knight of the Unicorn slay his fathers warriors (44.89 92) an exploit that elicits Leones esteem rather than
his reprisal recalls situations in past romances when chivalric magnanimity makes an opponent admire the valor of a deadly enemy.17
Leone displays such magnanimity more concretely in canto 45 when he
rescues Ruggiero from imprisonment and sure death at the hands of
Theodora. Becoming friends, the two knights turn their hostile rivalry
into a contest of courtesy and generosity.
Daniela Delcorno Branca shows the notable and numerous analogies between the Leone- Ruggiero narrative and the segment of the
thirteenth- century prose Lancelot do Lac that develops the rivalry and
eventual friendship between the young Lancelot and Galehot and the
latters magnanimous help in advancing the formers amorous relationship to Guinevere.18 In other words, when Ariosto prolongs the narrative at the end of the poem, he adds the kind of action that will remind
readers of chivalric rivalries that have turned into friendships in prior
romances. Even Zatti acknowledges that the definitiva liquidazione
(definitive dissolution) of romance at the end of the poem does not
occur before the Leone- Ruggiero addition concede al romanzo un
ultimo sussulto (concedes to romance one last throe) (31). As I see it,
this addition affirms the ongoing presence of romance rather than its
dissolution.
Pio Rajna, Le fonti dellOrlando furioso (Florence: Sansoni, 1975), 601.
Critics have pointed to other romance motifs in this addition. See, e.g., Remo
Ceseranis comment on cantos 44.97, 45.9, and 45.56 in Orlando furioso e Cinque
canti, ed. Remo Ceserani and Sergio Zatti, 2 vols. (Turin: Unione TipograficoEditrice Torinese, 1997); and Casadei, 161.
18 Daniela Delcorno Branca, La conclusione dellOrlando furioso: Qualche osservazione, in Canova and Galli, esp. 133 35.
16
17

398

MLQ

December 2010

Modern interpreters who maintain that Ariostos poem becomes

more epic in its last segment cite his more frequent imitation of the
Aeneid as evidence. Colin Burrow, for example, points out that many
of the major actions in this [closing] phase of the Furioso derive from
the Iliadic second half of the Aeneid (68). There are, indeed, several prominent imitations of Virgils poem in the last quarter of the
Furioso, capped by the one at the end of the poem when Ruggiero kills
Rodomonte.19 But the Virgilian matter imitated does not transform
the romanzo narrative into which it is embedded. On the contrary, the
Virgilian matter is modified to fit its surrounding context.
For example, Ruggiero and Rinaldos judicial duel, one episode
adapted from the Aeneid, is solemnly arranged to determine the outcome of the war between Agramante and Carlomagno (Orlando furioso,
38.77 39.9). Because Rinaldo is Bradamantes brother, Ruggiero finds
himself in a troubling predicament. When Bradamante hears of the
impending duel, she can only weep at the prospect of the death of either
her beloved or her brother. The duel begins at the end of canto 38 with
Ruggiero restraining himself from dealing a fatal blow to his prospective brother-in-law. At the start of the next canto Melissa, the sorceress
who is Bradamantes protectress, relieves her torment by appearing in
the guise of Rodomonte and convincing Agramante to break the truce.
Rinaldo and Ruggiero, offended by the breach, quit their combat as
the hostilities between the warring sides resume. Ariosto is imitating
here the beginning of the last book of the Aeneid, when the decisive
duel between Turnus and Aeneas is interrupted as a result of Juturnas
impersonation of Camers, who convinces the Rutulians to break their
truce with the Trojans and their allies (12.113 310).
However, Ariostos version of the duel possesses an amatory dimension lacking in the Aeneid. The love relation between Bradamante
and Ruggiero affects the account of the duel and its interruption in
19 Some occasional situations or events in the last part of the poem that resemble
ones in the Aeneid are not poetic imitations as such. For example, Beatrices opposition to Bradamantes union with Ruggiero (44.37f.) recalls Amatas objections to her
daughters marriage to Aeneas (Aeneid, 7.360 72). This similarity cannot be said to
add an epic dimension to the narrative. If anything, this penultimate impediment
(and there have been many prior ones) to the union of the lovers generates Ruggieros rivalry and eventual friendship with Leone and thereby defers the ending, in
good romance fashion.

Javitch

Last Part of Orlando Furioso

399

ways that distinguish it markedly from the Latin model. For example,
Melissa intervenes not to postpone the death of one of the combatants, as Juturna does, but to relieve Bradamantes emotional suffering
and to resolve the dilemma that the lovers face (a romance dilemma,
not an epic one). While Ariosto devises a plot development that allows
him to imitate Virgil, what particularly interests him is the opportunity
to depict the plight of two protagonists caught between martial duty
and love, honor and desire. In short, Ariosto seeks to change the matter imitated to make it fit into a romanzo context. One might say that
he romancifies the Virgilian matter. The grafting of this matter may
well enrich the narrative, but the formal and thematic demands of that
narrative here, the typical intertwining of armi and amori make the
poet modify his Latin model, not the other way around.
Even if the part of the Italian narrative that imitates the Aeneid is
quite faithful to the Latin model, the quick modulation of that narrative into romance is not. Another example the funeral procession,
Brandimartes burial, and what immediately follows it (Orlando furioso,
43.166 85) illustrates this phenomenon. Two cantos earlier Brandimarte has been killed by Gradasso in a multiple duel on the island
of Lipadusa (41.100 102). Initially left unburied, his body is eventually transported by Orlando to Sicily and laid to rest, after a solemn
procession, in Agrigento. The funeral and Orlandos moving oration
(43.170 75) are modeled on the funeral held for Pallas and on Aeneass
obsequies in the Aeneid (11.22 80). But how different the context of
Brandimartes funeral is from what leads to and follows Pallass. Once
again the amatory theme, absent from the story of Pallass death and
funeral, is given prominence in Ariostos account, namely, the narrative devoted to Fiordiligis premonition of and grief- stricken reaction
to Brandimartes death. Fiordiligi and Brandimarte are one of the few
loving couples in the poem whose loyalty to each other never wavers.
Fiordiligi makes her way, too, to Sicily to mourn at the funeral, but she,
unlike Brandimartes male companions, is inconsolable. Right after the
military funeral the narrative focuses on her mourning her spouse and
building a tomb for him and concludes their love story with her refusal
to leave this sepulcher and her eventual death there (43.182 85).
This ending is probably inspired, as Rajna points out (562 63), by
the thirteenth- century romance Palamedes, in which the daughter of

400

MLQ

December 2010

the king of Northumberland decides to be buried alive with her dead

lover, Febus, after repenting of her cruelty to him. Exemplified here
is Ariostos recurring practice of ending an extensive imitation of the
Aeneid not on an epic note but with a modulation into romance. The
transition from the epic pomp of the funeral to Fiordiligis romantic
death in the tomb is so smooth (43.182 83) as to appear seamless, yet
the narrative shifts in typical romanzo fashion from military matters to
those of the heart. If Ariosto intended to make the last part of his poem
more epic, he would not give such prominence to the amatory dimension of Brandimartes death but would stick to the military theme. Yet
the conventions of the romanzo not only allow the thematic conflation
of armi and amori but call for it.
Tasso, it turns out, also imitates the funeral of Pallas when he
describes the funeral for Dudone in Gerusalemme liberata (3.66 73).
By comparing Tassos imitation with Ariostos, one can discern what
an imitation of Virgil looks like when it is embedded not in romance
but in epic narrative. The obsequies held for Dudone occur right after
the initial skirmish between the Crusaders and the pagans in which
Dudone has died at the hands of Argante. Before Dudone is buried,
Tasso devotes some stanzas to Goffredo, who halts the fighting and
gives orders for setting up the Christian camp outside Jerusalem. But
unlike Ariostos prolonged account of Fiordiligi in Africa and other
matters that interrupt the sequel to Brandimartes death, Tassos narrative never leaves the scene of military action, and only as much time
elapses as is needed for the Christian warriors to pitch their tents
before Dudones funeral rites. Tassos description of Goffredo and the
oration he delivers at Dudones bier (3.67 70) echoes Orlandos at
Brandimartes burial (e.g., Orlando furioso, 43.170) even as it imitates
Aeneass obsequies for Pallas (e.g., Aeneid, 11.36 38). Tasso invokes
both Ariostos imitation of Virgil and the original Latin poem to make
readers aware of his departures from and critique of Ariosto. The main
differences apart from the fact that Dudones death and funeral
occur early in the poem, unlike Brandimartes near the end of the
Furioso are the stylistic register and the context. One is hardly aware
that Tasso is imitating anyone, because the obsequies for Dudone are
identical in tone and content to the martial actions represented before
and after the funeral. Tassos imitation is camouflaged, so to speak,

Javitch

Last Part of Orlando Furioso

401

because it blends in with the rest of his epic narrative. No amatory or

romance elements complement or open up Tassos military scenario
(the funeral procession is immediately followed by the expedition to
gather lumber for building the siege machines) as they do in Ariostos, nor is it conceivable that Tasso might so compromise the unity of
tone and action that he has so deliberately sought to achieve. Whereas
Ariostos imitations of Virgil tend to stand out because of the romance
context, and thereby make us notice (and admire) his ability to conjoin
two poetic traditions, Tassos imitations are completely assimilated with
a surrounding narrative whose generic code is much the same as Virgils. In short, Tasso aims to show how one can truly fuse modern and
Virgilian heroic poetry, in contrast to Ariostos hybridization. By Tassos time, generic mixing was decried, but at the start of the sixteenth
century poetic genres were not yet so codified indeed, they were not
even conceived as strictly separate as to inhibit Ariostos conflation
of romanzo and Virgilian epic matter.
For Ariosto, one attraction of the romanzo as bequeathed by
Boiardo is its capaciousness, its readiness to accommodate different
poetic traditions today we would say different generic strains for
example, elegiac love poetry, the novella, or classical epic and comedy.
He exploits the potential openness that he has already perceived in
Orlando innamorato, even though his incorporation of ancient narrative
poetry, especially Ovids and Virgils, is more extensive and more discernible (at the textual level) than Boiardos is. Ariosto makes his imitations of these Latin poets much more recognizable so that readers can
admire his ability to incorporate classical matter into the fabric of his
romanzo. Integrating the poetic traditions that he conspicuously brings
together is an important part of his artistic innovation.
I conclude with some observations on Ariostos final imitation of
the Aeneid, namely, the death of Rodomonte at the hands of Ruggiero,
which brings the Furioso to a close. Since the mid- sixteenth century
interpreters have cited this imitation as evidence of Ariostos wish to
emphasize his affiliation with the archetypal epic of antiquity in the
last part of his poem.20 John Harington, the Elizabethan translator of
For a useful account of the various views of Ariostos success or failure in this
respect see Joseph C. Sitterson Jr., Allusive and Elusive Meanings: Reading Ariostos
Vergilian Ending, Renaissance Quarterly 45 (1992): 1 19.
20

MLQ

402

December 2010

Orlando furioso (1591), states it succinctly: In the death of Rodomont, to

shew himselfe a perfect imitator of Virgill [sic], Ariosto endeth just as
Virgil ends his Aeneads with the death of Turnus.21 Not only does the
last octave allude to the death of Turnus at the very end of the Aeneid,
but some of it virtually translates Virgils last lines (see Orlando furioso,
46.140; Aeneid, 12.950 53).22 However, the entire final episode, which
runs for forty octaves, has other striking aspects that have received
scant attention. Its beginning is pure chivalric romance. A mysterious knight clad all in black interrupts the nuptial festivities hosted by
Carlomagno for Bradamante and Ruggiero. He defiantly confronts
the gathered paladini (46.104) and, after identifying himself to the
astonished company, accuses Ruggiero of treachery to his former liege,
Agramante, and challenges him to a duel. The unexpected appearance
of a knight whose challenge interrupts a festive gathering at Carlomagnos or, more often, Arthurs court is typical of chivalric romances, but
of their openings, not their endings.23
Ruggiero accepts the challenge, and once he is armed, the rest
of the episode twenty-five of the forty octaves is devoted to one of
the most detailed descriptions of a chivalric duel in the poem. Until
the final octave this description contains no imitation or even allusion
to the closing segment of Aeneid. At the verbal level, then, there is no
direct invitation to think of the duel between Ruggiero and Rodomonte
as a reprise of the final duel between Aeneas and Turnus until that
last stanza. In episodes that imitate the Aeneid Ariosto usually provides
several precise markers, both verbal and situational, to indicate what
part of the Latin poem he is imitating. So, in the imitation first discussed (38.77 39.9), the language and shared details of the solemn
pact between Agramante and Carlomagno, as well as the truce that
interrupts the duel between Ruggiero and Rinaldo, provide clues that
the entire episode is an imitation of the first segment of Aeneid 12. HowLudovico Ariosto, Orlando furioso, ed. Robert McNulty, trans. John Harington
(Oxford: Clarendon, 1972), 557.
22 Stefano Jossa points out that the last two lines, specifically the rhymes, also
echo Dantes Inferno (8.44 46) (Ariosto [Bologna: Mulino, 2009], 68).
23 See Emilio Bigis comment in Ludovico Ariosto, Orlando furioso, ed. Emilio
Bigi, 2 vols. (Milan: Rusconi, 1982); and Rajna, 605. Angelica and Argaglias sudden
appearance and challenge in the midst of festivities at Carlomagnos court at the
start of Boiardos Innamorato (1.1.20 28) immediately come to mind.
21

Javitch

Last Part of Orlando Furioso

403

ever, here, in the final episode of the poem, before the very last stanza,
Ariosto imitates none of Virgils language at the end of the Aeneid.24
In other words, it is virtually because of the last stanza that the duel
between the two paladins is associated with the one between Aeneas
and Turnus. In the final struggle between Ruggiero and Rodomonte,
moreover, Rodomonte never tries to save his life by appealing for mercy,
as Turnus does before Aeneas kills him. Ruggiero invites Rodomonte to
surrender, but the pagan knight scorns the offer and tries to stab Ruggiero before the latter kills him.
I do not mean to suggest that there are no parallels between these
combats: they are both, after all, the last duels fought by the poems
heroes, and the events whose outcomes bring the poems to a full stop.
But if one thinks about the causes of these confrontations, the deliberately romancifying differences in Ariostos version become more noticeable. Rodomonte appears out of nowhere, having disappeared from the
poem eleven cantos earlier (35.48). In the Furioso, therefore, no logical
or fated progression up to Ruggieros confrontation with and killing of
Rodomonte mirrors Aeneass defeat of Turnus, which puts an end to
the constant threat he has posed to peace and order and is shown to be
part of a necessary and even divinely ordained pattern.
Yet, despite the differences between these concluding episodes,
critics and literary historians have projected Ariostos imitation of the
close of the Aeneid back onto the entire final duel. Even more remarkably, this maneuver is presumed to affect the last nine cantos, on which
Ariosto supposedly imposes a teleological design to make his poem
arrive at Virgilian closure. The final octave is retroactively made to
direct virtually the last fifth of the Furioso. Ariostos adaptation of the
Aeneid throughout his poem belies these claims. The parts of Virgils
poem that Ariostos imitations appropriate never determine the shape
and content of the contexts in which they are embedded; on the contrary, they are modified to fit and to contribute to the language and
ethos of chivalric romance.
How the imitation of the Aeneid in the closing lines of Orlando
furioso colors the entire last episode, and also supports the claim that
24 At 46.134 Ariosto does allude to the duel between Tydeus and Agylleus in Statiuss Thebaid (6.888 93, 902 3), but he often makes such allusions to, or borrows
extended similes from, ancient epic poems in his descriptions of chivalric duels.

404

MLQ

December 2010

the last part of the poem takes an epic turn, illustrates the power and
prestige of the Aeneid as a subtext in Ariostos poem. But one must not
be blinded to the intertextual reality, namely, that much more of the
romanzo tradition has gone into the form and matter of the last episode
and, similarly, into the last fifth of the poem. Ascribing an epic turn
to the final cantos is a broader instance of privileging Virgils text and
exaggerating the epic dimension of the last episode. Just as readers
maintain that this last episode is Virgilian, so some look for and foreground epic aspects of the last part of the poem when, in fact, romance
form and content continue to characterize it.25 To be sure, the last nine
cantos contain, as do prior ones, parts derived from or inspired by
Latin poetry, but these parts are fully integrated into the romance fabric. Prominent among them are the recurring imitations of the Aeneid
grafted innestati, as the Italians say on the narrative. These graftings enrich the poem but do not modify its generic identity.
Ariostos conjoining of his imitations of Virgil (and also of Ovid)
to the traditional vernacular matter of the romanzo was one important way that he revitalized, some would say ennobled, the genre. But
the romanzo as Boiardo bequeathed it already had an in-built capacity
to absorb different kinds of poetry. The permeability of late quattrocento romance, the possibility it offered of including and combining
what we today perceive as different generic codes, had to be one of its
most attractive features for Ariosto. Before and in Ariostos time these
generic differences and their combination were not yet preoccupying
25 Here, for example, is a simplistic reduction of Burrows nuanced account of
how the later stages of the Furioso turn to Christianized epic: As Burrow reminds
us, Ariosto made substantial revisions to the poem, revisions that steer it towards
epic resolution of martial and Christian conquest. That this denouement for both
heroes, in the final analysis, is specifically epic in nature is made clear by allusions
to both Homer and Virgil. Thus, Orlandos fury is channeled away from matters of
love to matters of war when his friend Brandimarte is killed in battle, an echo of
the death of Patroclus and Pallas. . . . Similarly, Ruggieros warrior credentials are
highlighted when the poem ends not with his union to Bradamante, but with his
subsequent defeat of the pagan Rodomonte. His decision to kill Rodomonte is one
of pious self- defense . . . but it is nonetheless compared to Aeneas slaying of Turnus.
Ariostos detailed revisions, then, demonstrate how the digressions of romance must
be raised only to be defeated in order to satisfy the demands of Christianized epic
(Adeline Johns-Putra, The History of the Epic [New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006],
64 65).

Javitch

Last Part of Orlando Furioso

405

issues for practicing poets. Distinctions and oppositions between epic

and romance that Aristotelian critics and writers formulated later, and
that have remained with us, did not obtain, and Italian authors of chivalric romance desired to integrate (what would be distinctly codified
as) the two generic strains rather than to separate and oppose them. We
have to try to imagine the conjoining of these poetic strains as taking
place less self- consciously before their differences had become issues
of artistic worth and legitimacy. Instead, therefore, of trying to partition Orlando furioso into romance and epic, or of maintaining that a
conscious opposition of these genres is at work in the poem, we have to
appreciate how Ariosto took advantage of the Boiardan romanzos inclusiveness to integrate and to keep meshing two strains that before long
could not enjoy such a complementary relation.

Daniel Javitch is professor of comparative literature at New York University. An

Italian-language collection of his essays on Orlando furioso is forthcoming. He is
also at work on a book-length study tentatively titled Thinking about Genre in the
Sixteenth Century.