Showing posts with label Ariosto. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Ariosto. Show all posts

Friday

Acquisitions (136): Italian Epic


Buttura, Antonio., ed. I Quattro Poeti Italiani con una Scelta di Poesie Italiane dal 1200 sino a’ Nostri Tempi. [Dante Alighieri / Francesco Petrarca / Ludovico Ariosto / Torquato Tasso]. Parigi: Presso Lefevre, Librajo / Baudry, Librajo, 1833.


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C. S. Lewis: The Allegory of Love (1936)

Cosa non detta in prosa mai né in rima


C. S. Lewis once claimed that the ideal happiness he would choose, "if he were regardless of futurity":
would be to read the Italian epic – to be always convalescent from some small illness and always seated in a window that overlooked the sea, there to read these poems eight hours of each happy day.
I'm sure I'm not the only one to find this a curious choice of entertainment. I have the advantage, though, of having actually read Ariosto's immense epic poem Orlando Furioso - in Italian - under the learned auspices of Rick Backhouse and Mike Hanne of Auckland University's Romance Languages Department. In other words, I do have some idea what Lewis is talking about.

Later, in 1953, when asked for a puff for the cover of J. R. R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings, Lewis wrote:
If Ariosto rivaled it in invention (in fact he does not) he would still lack its heroic seriousness. No imaginary world has been projected which is at once so multifarious and so true to its own inner laws; none so seemingly objective, so disinfected from the taint of an author’s merely individual psychology; none so relevant to the actual human situation yet so free from allegory.
So who exactly is this Ariosto whose "invention" might be said to rival that of the founding father of the contemporary epic fantasy genre, and whose work Lewis considered so delightful that it could provide entertainment for eternity?


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Sir John Harington: Orlando furioso in English heroical verse (1634)
Orlando furioso in English heroical verse / by Sr. Iohn Harington of Bathe Knight. London: Printed by G. Miller for J. Parker, 1634.
But before we get to that, I'd better mention the pretext for this discussion. When Professor Don Smith's family decided to donate his magnificent collection of seventeenth and eighteenth century books to the Auckland Public Library early in 2025, the idea came up of a series of seminars designed to highlight particular aspects of the gift.

As one of the invitees, I quickly fastened on Don's copy of the revised edition of Sir John Harington's 1591 verse translation of the Orlando Furioso - "Roland run Mad" might serve as a possible equivalent for that title - for my part of the proceedings.

Why? In the first place, because I remain fascinated by Ariosto's complex and fascinating poem; but also because this, the first full version of his work in English (albeit described by no less an authority than Ben Jonson as "under all translations, ... the worst" - though unfortunately Drummond of Hawthornden, in his record of the poet's conversation, did not tell us why) has its own peculiar interest.


Hieronimo Custodis: Sir John Harington (1560-1612)


Sir John Harington is described in our modern oracle Wikipedia as "an English courtier, author and translator popularly known as the inventor of the flush toilet." Taking that last point first:
He was the author of the description of a flush-toilet forerunner ... in A New Discourse of a Stale Subject, called the Metamorphosis of Ajax (1596), a political allegory and coded attack on the monarchy which is nowadays his best-known work.
The actual flush-toilet in question, though apparently installed in his Kelston house, was employed here mainly as a metaphor for the "backed-up" nature of business at court. Harington was, after all, a friend and supporter of the last of Elizabeth's favourites, the glamorous Earl of Essex, whose failed attempt at a coup d'état against the aging Queen led to a slew of executions in the final years of her reign.

Characteristically, Harington escaped any dire consequences from this association by acting as an informant against his former patron - in particular, providing Elizabeth with the information she needed to undermine Essex's attempts to end the costly war in Ireland ("If I had meant to abandon Ireland, it had been superfluous to send you there").

As Harington himself put it in one of his epigrams:
Treason doth never prosper? What's the reason?
for if it prosper, none dare call it treason.
He first came to court in the 1580s, when his poetry and witty conversation earned him immediate favour from the Queen:
Elizabeth encouraged his writing, but Harington was inclined to overstep the mark in his somewhat Rabelaisian and occasionally risqué pieces.
When portions of his Orlando Furioso began to circulate, the Queen finally put her foot down:
Angered by the raciness of his translations, Elizabeth told Harington that he was to leave and not return until he had translated the entire poem. She chose this punishment rather than actually banishing him, but she considered the task so difficult that it was assumed Harington would not bother to comply. Harington, however, chose to follow through with the request and completed the translation in 1591.
His later years at the court of King James were less happy. He was (briefly) imprisoned for debt, and even after escaping from prison and being subsequently pardoned by the King, who employed him as tutor to the Prince of Wales, Harington failed to prosper. The job came to a premature conclusion when his pupil died of typhoid fever. Harington followed him to the grave two weeks later.


Trey Parker & Matt Stone: South Park (1997- )


He's not an entirely forgotten man, however:
Harington appears as a ghost in the [South Park] episode "Reverse Cowgirl". He explains how to use his invention, the toilet, properly.
I suspect he would have preferred to have been remembered for the immense labour involved in translating at least the lion's share of Orlando Furioso's 38,736 lines. To give you some standard of comparison, John Milton's Paradise Lost (1667-1674) contains 10,565 lines - incidentally, Milton borrowed his own famous line "Things unattempted yet in Prose or Rhyme" from Ariosto's phrase "cosa non detta in prosa mai, né in rima". Only Spenser's incomplete Faerie Queene (1590-96), at over 36,000 lines, can rival the sheer scope of Ariosto's masterpiece, first published, in part, in 1516; then again, in full, in 1532.


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Ludovico Ariosto: Orlando Furioso (1558)


Let's take a closer look at it. Here's Ariosto's own description of the scope of his ambitions:
Le donne, i cavallier, l'arme, gli amori,
le cortesie, l'audaci imprese io canto,
che furo al tempo che passaro i Mori
d'Africa il mare, e in Francia nocquer tanto,
seguendo l'ire e i giovenil furori
d'Agramante lor re, che si diè vanto
di vendicar la morte di Troiano
sopra re Carlo imperator romano.

Dirò d'Orlando in un medesmo tratto
cosa non detta in prosa mai, né in rima:
che per amor venne in furore e matto,
d'uom che sì saggio era stimato prima;
se da colei che tal quasi m'ha fatto,
che 'l poco ingegno ad or ad or mi lima,
me ne sarà però tanto concesso,
che mi basti a finir quanto ho promesso.

- Ludovico Ariosto: Orlando Furioso (1532)

Sir John Harington: Orlando furioso in English heroical verse (1607)


But what exactly do they mean? Let's compare Harington's version:
Of Dames, of Knights, of armes, of loues delight,
Of courtesies, of high attempts I speake,
Then when ye Moores transported all their might
On Africke seas, the force of France to breake:
Incited by the youthfull heate and spight
Of Agramant their king, that vowd to wreake
The death of King Trayana (lately slaine)
Vpon the Romane Emperour Charlemaine.

I will no lesse Orlandos acts declare,
(A tale in prose ne verse yet sung or sayd)
Who fell bestraught with loue, a hap most rare,
To one that earst was counted wise and stayd:
If my sweet Saint that causeth my like care,
My slender muse affoord some gracious ayd,
I make no doubt but I shall haue the skill,
As much as I haue promist to fulfill.

- Sir John Harington: Orlando furioso in English heroical verse (1607)

Ludovico Ariosto: Orlando Furioso. Trans Guido Waldman (1607)


Here's Guido Waldman's stodgy, but very useful, prose crib:
I sing of knights and ladies, of love and arms, of courtly chivalry, of courageous deeds - all from the time when the Moors crossed the sea from Africa and wrought havoc in France. I shall tell of the anger, the fiery rage of young Agramant their king, whose boast it was that he would avenge himself on Charles, Emperor of Rome, for King Trojan's death. / I shall tell of Orlando, too, setting down what has never before been recounted in prose or rhyme: of Orlando, driven raving mad by love - and he a man who had always been esteemed for his great prudence - if she, who has reduced me almost to a like condition, and even now is eroding my last fragments of sanity, leaves me yet with sufficient to complete what I have undertaken.

- Ludovico Ariosto: Orlando Furioso. Trans. Guido Waldman. 1974. The World’s Classics. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983.

Ludovico Ariosto: Orlando Furioso. Trans. Barbara Reynolds (1975-77)


And here's Barbara Reynolds' fluent, if a little jog-trot, verse translation, published in the Penguin Classics series:
Of ladies, cavaliers, of love and war,
Of courtesies and of brave deeds I sing,
In times of high endeavour when the Moor
Had crossed the seas from Africa to bring
Great harm to France, when Agramante swore
In wrath, being now the youthful Moorish king,
To avenge Troiano, who was lately slain,
Upon the Roman Emperor Charlemagne.

And of Orlando I will also tell
Things unattempted yet in prose or rhyme,
Of the mad frenzy that for love befell
One who so wise was held in former time,
If she who my poor talent by her spell
Has so reduced that I resemble him,
Will grant me now sufficient for my task:
The wit to reach the end is all I ask.

- Ludovico Ariosto: Orlando Furioso (The Frenzy of Orlando): A Romantic Epic. Part 1 of 2. Trans. Barbara Reynolds. Penguin Classics. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1975.


Compared to Italian, English is a language poor in rhymes. It can be hard for poets not to rhyme in Italian: they spring up naturally as a result of having so many standard suffixes to their words.

In English, on the other hand, fluent rhyming is desperately difficult to achieve, and those who are good at it are a breed apart. Particularly clever rhymes tend to sound comic and A. A. Milne-ish in our language, too, unless you're very careful to maintain a formal register.

None of the English versions of Ariosto can really be said to achieve his witty lightness of touch. Probably the closest thing to it in our language would be Byron's Don Juan - and that's more social satire than fantasy. That's only one of Ariosto's possible registers: he sounds, in fact, far more like a mid-Renaissance harbinger of American SF-writer Jack Vance than any comparable English poet. Both Ariosto and Vance are adept at compiling long, episodic narratives with unflagging zeal and seemingly boundless creativity. But Vance didn't have to do it in perfectly poised eight-line stanzas.

Harington, as you can see above, takes considerable liberties with Ariosto's original text - even here, at the outset of the poem. What, for example, is his justification for transforming the poet's captious mistress (Alessandra Benucci) - referred to in his text simply as "colei" [she] - into "my sweet Saint"? Is it possible he had Gloriana herself in mind?

As Jane E. Everson puts it in a 2005 article on Harington's translation:
That Harington significantly abbreviated the text of the Orlando furioso is well known; what has not been closely studied is how he does so and the extent to which his modifications are not linguistically but culturally motivated. A close reading reveals changes designed to take account of differing cultural, political, and ideological factors between early sixteenth-century Ferrara and Elizabethan England.
The comparison included below of the original and final texts of Harington's opening stanza reveals few significant divergences beyond a bit of tightening in line 5. However, further scrutiny of the 1591 and 1634 versions in more detail might also reveal significant differences in what was deemed appropriate by (respectively) the late Elizabethan and early Jacobean courts:

1591:

Of Dames, of Knights, of armes, of loues delight,
Of courtesies, of high attempts I speake,
Then when the Moores transported all their might
On Affrick seas the force of France to breake:
Drawne by the youthfull heate and raging spite,
Of Agramant their king, that vowd to wreake
The death of King Trayana (lately slayne)
Vpon the Romane Emperour Charlemaine.
1634:

Of Dames, of Knights, of armes, of loves delight,
Of courtesies, of high attempts I speake,
Then when the Moores transported all their might
On Africke seas, the force of France to breake:
Incited by the youthfull heate and spight
Of Agramant their king, that vow'd to wreake
The death of King Trayano (lately slaine)
Vpon the Romane Emperour Charlemaine.


Sir John Harington: Orlando furioso [Dedication] (1591)



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Nicola Consoni: Dante in Limbo (c.1850)
Virgil & Dante meeting Homer, Horace, Ovid & Lucan


Italian Epic Poets:
  1. Dante Alighieri (1265–1321)
  2. Luigi Pulci (1432-1484)
  3. Matteo Maria Boiardo (1440-1494)
  4. Ludovico Ariosto (1474–1533)
  5. Torquato Tasso (1544-1595)
  6. Alessandro Tassoni (1565-1635)
  7. Anthologies & Secondary Literature

Books I own are marked in bold:



Dante Alighieri ... was an Italian poet, writer, and philosopher. His Divine Comedy, originally called Comedìa (modern Italian: Commedia) and later christened Divina by Giovanni Boccaccio, is widely considered one of the most important poems of the Middle Ages and the greatest literary work in the Italian language.
At a time when Latin was still the dominant language for scholarly and literary writing — and when many Italian poets drew inspiration from French or Provençal traditions — Dante broke with both by writing in the vernacular, specifically his native Tuscan dialect. His De vulgari eloquentia [On Eloquence in the Vernacular] was one of the first scholarly defenses of the vernacular. His use of the Florentine dialect for works such as La Vita Nuova (1295) and Divine Comedy helped establish the modern-day standardized Italian language. His work set a precedent that important Italian writers such as Petrarch and Boccaccio would later follow.
- Wikipedia: Dante Alighieri
As far as Dante's reception into British culture goes, it's interesting to note just how long it took for his great epic poem to appear in English. The first full translation was not published until 1785–1802, and Henry Francis Cary's, the first to be widely read, did not appear until 1814.
This may have been partialliy because educated English readers were expected to have enough Italian to follow the poem in the original - but then, the same argument would have to apply to the other epic poets included in the list anove, virtually all of whom appeared in English long before Dante.
One thing's for certain, when C. S. Lewis, above, mentions his desire to spend eight hours a day, every day, reading the Italian epic whilst "seated in a window that overlooked the sea", it isn't Dante he's talking about. Dante is far more serious business: an avowed co-equal with Homer, Virgil, Milton, and other great souls. He's not a mere frivolous romancer, spinning tales about Charlemagne, King Arthur and other heroes of chivalry like Boiardo and Ariosto or even (to a somewhat lesser extent) Tasso.



Bibliography

    Editions:

  1. Le Rime [1283-1308)
    • Included in: Vita nuova / Rime: Edizione Integrale Commentata. Ed. Fred Chiappelli. Grande Universale Mursia testi, Nuova serie, 7. 1965. Milano: U. Mursia editore S.p.A., 1978.
    • Foster, Kenelm, & Patrick Boyde. Dante’s Lyric Poetry. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1967.
      1. The Poems – Text and Translation
      2. Commentary
  2. La Vita Nuova (1294)
    • Included in: Vita nuova / Rime: Edizione Integrale Commentata. Ed. Fred Chiappelli. Grande Universale Mursia testi, Nuova serie, 7. 1965. Milano: U. Mursia editore S.p.A., 1978.
    • Included in: Dante: The Selected Works. Trans. Dante Gabriel Rossetti. 1846-47. Ed. Paolo Milano. 1947. London: Chatto & Windus, 1972.
    • The New Life / La Vita Nuova. Trans. William Anderson. Penguin Classics. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1964.
    • La Vita Nuova (Poems of Youth). Trans. Barbara Reynolds. 1969. Penguin Classics. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1975.
  3. De vulgari eloquentia (1302–05)
    • De Vulgari Eloquentia. Con Introduzione di Antero Meozzi. Biblioteca di Letteratura. Milano: Casa Editrice Carlo Signorelli S.p.A., 1978.
  4. Convivio (1307)
    • Il Convito di Dante Alighieri e le Epistole. Ed. Pietro Fraticelli. Opere Minori di Dante Alighieri, III. Firenze: G. Barberà, Editore, 1887.
    • Convivio. Ed. Piero Cudini. I Grandi Libri. Milano: Aldo Garzanti Editore, 1980.
    • The Convivio. Trans. Philip H. Wicksteed. 1903. The Temple Classics. London: J. M. Dent & Sons. Ltd., 1908.
  5. Monarchia (1313)
    • De Monarchia: Testo Latino e Traduzione Italiana a Fronte. Con Prefazione di Ranieri Allulli. Biblioteca di Letteratura. Milano: Casa Editrice Carlo Signorelli S.p.A., 1970.
  6. La Divina Commedia (1320)
    • La Divina Commedia. Ed. C. H. Grandgent. 1933. Rev. Charles S. Singleton. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1972.
    • La Divina Commedia (1955-67)
      1. Inferno. Ed. Natalino Sapegno. 1955. Second Edition. 1968. Scrittori Italiani. Firenze: “La Nuova Italia” Editrice, 1982.
      2. Purgatorio. Ed. Luigi Pietrobono. I Classici della Scuola. Torino: Società Editrice Internazionale, 1967.
      3. Paradiso. Ed. Natalino Sapegno. 1955. Second Edition. 1968. Scrittori Italiani. Firenze: “La Nuova Italia” Editrice, 1978.
    • La Divina Commedia. Ed. Anna Maria Chiavacci Leonardi. Oscar Classici. Milano: Arnoldo Mondadori Editore, 1991-94.
      1. Inferno (1991 / 2005)
      2. Purgatorio (1994 / 2005)
      3. Paradiso (1994 / 2005)
    • The Vision, or Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise. Trans. Henry Francis Cary. 1814. With 109 Illustrations by John Flaxman. Oxford Edition. London: Henry Frowde / Oxford University Press, 1910.
    • Dante's Divine Comedy. Ed. & trans. Philip H. Wicksteed et al. The Temple Classics. London: J. M. Dent & Sons. Ltd., 1899-1901.
      1. The Inferno (1900 / 1941)
      2. The Purgatorio 1901 / 1946)
      3. The Paradiso (1899 / 1946)
    • Included in: Dante: The Selected Works. Trans. Laurence Binyon. 1933-43. Ed. Paolo Milano. 1947. London: Chatto & Windus, 1972.
    • The Comedy of Dante Alighieri the Florentine. Trans. Dorothy L. Sayers & Barbara Reynolds. Penguin Classics. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1949-62.
      1. Cantica I: Hell [L’Inferno]. Trans. Dorothy L. Sayers (1949 / 1972)
      2. Cantica II: Purgatory [Il Purgatorio]. Trans. Dorothy L. Sayers (1955 / 1971)
      3. Cantica III: Paradise [Il Paradiso]. Trans. Dorothy L. Sayers & Barbara Reynolds (1962 / 1971)
    • Dante's Divine Comedy. Illustrated by Sandow Birk. Trans. Sandow Birk & Marcus Sanders. Preface by Doug Harvey. Introduction by Michael F. Meister. San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 2003-5.
      1. Dante's Inferno (2003)
      2. Dante's Purgatorio (2004)
      3. Dante's Paradiso (2005)
      4. Sandow Birk. Dante's Divine Comedy: The Complete Paintings (2005)
  7. Eclogues (1320)

    8. Secondary:

  8. Anderson, William. Dante the Maker. 1980. London: Hutchinson, 1983.
  9. Cunningham, Gilbert F. The Divine Comedy in English: A Critical Bibliography, 1782-1900. Edinburgh & London: Oliver and Boyd, 1965.
  10. Cunningham, Gilbert F. The Divine Comedy in English: A Critical Bibliography, 1901-1966. Edinburgh & London: Oliver and Boyd, 1966.
  11. Freccero, John, ed. Dante: A Collection of Critical Essays. Twentieth Century Views. Ed. Maynard Mack. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1965.
  12. Griffiths, Eric, & Matthew Reynolds, ed. Dante in English. Penguin Poets in Translation. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 2005.
  13. Rizzatti, Maria Luisa. The Life and Times of Dante. 1965. Trans. Salvator Attanasio. Portraits of Greatness. London: Paul Hamlyn, 1967.
  14. Wicksteed, Philip H., trans. The Early Lives of Dante. 1903. The King’s Classics. London: Alexander Moring Limited / The De la More Press, 1904.
    15.



Domenico di Michelino: Dante Alighieri holding the Divine Comedy (1465)



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Luigi Pulci (1432-1484)

Luigi Pulci
(1432-1484)

Luigi Pulci ... was an Italian diplomat and poet best known for his Morgante, an epic and parodic poem about a giant who is converted to Christianity by Orlando and follows the knight in many adventures.
Pulci was born in Florence. His patrons were the Medicis ... who often sent Pulci on diplomatic missions. Even so, sometime around 1470 Pulci needed more money and went into the service of Roberto Sanseverino d'Aragona, a northern condottiere. In 1478 (after the assassination of Lorenzo's brother Giuliano during the Pazzi Conspiracy), Pulci ... wrote a poem dedicated to Lucrezia Tornabuoni [the mother of Lorenzo and Giuliano Medici] that fulminated against Pope Sixtus IV's Rome.
- Wikipedia: Dante Alighieri
It was Don Smith who first lent me a typescript of the translations from Quasimodo, Montale, and other modern Italian poems by Northland poet Kendrick Smithyman which I eventually edited and published as Campana to Montale: Versions from italian (2004). He also offered me, at the same time, a small two-volume pocket edition of Pulci's Morgante Maggiore. He'd been meaning to translate it himself, he said, but felt that he would never now have the leisure or concentration for the job. It was, he said, an essential stepping-stone in the road from Boiardo's Orlando Innamorato to its scene-stealing sequel, Ariosto's Orlando Furioso. And (unlike them) it had never been translated in full into English!
I'm sorry to say that I turned him down. I had already written a few versions of sonnets by Petrarch - and those were difficult enough to give me some idea of what a Sisyphean task such a translation could be. Now, I'm glad to say that the job has finally been completed:
In 1983 the Italian-American poet Joseph Tusiani translated in English all 30,080 verses of this work, subsequently published as a book in 2000 by Indiana University Press.
Before that, all that non-Italian-speaking readers had to go on was Byron's 1822 version of Canto One.
The satirical, even anti-clerical nature of much of Pulci's poem probably influenced François Rabelais's Gargantua and Pantagruel (1532-64), another set of satirical giant tales published 50 years later. It certainly also drew from the 11th century Chanson de Roland in its account of the fateful battle of Roncesvalles. As well as this:
The last five cantos of Pulci's work are based on La Spagna, a 14th-century Italian epic attributed to the Florentine Sostegno di Zanobi.
More to the point, Morgante opened the way to the series of Orlando [Roland]-centric satirical epic poems which would dominate Italian literature over the next century or so.



Bibliography

  1. Morgante (1483)
    • Lord Byron. "The Morgante Maggiore of Pulci" (1822). Included in: The Poetical Works. Ed. Frederick Page. 1904. Rev. ed. 1945. Oxford Standard Authors. London: Oxford University Press, 1959. 379-88.
    • Morgante: The Epic Adventures of Orlando and His Giant Friend Morgante. 1483. Trans. Joseph Tusiani. 1983. Introduction & Notes by Edoardo A. Lèbano. Bloomington & Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1998.





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Matteo Maria Boiardo (15th c)


Matteo Maria Boiardo ... was an Italian Renaissance poet, best known for his epic poem Orlando innamorato.
In 1441 [his] family moved to Ferrara, where Matteo Maria grew up until his father died in 1451. At an early age he entered the University of Ferrara, where he acquired a good knowledge of Greek and Latin, and even of the Oriental languages. He was in due time admitted doctor in philosophy and in law.
... The first translation of Boiardo into English was Robert Tofte's Orlando Inamorato: The Three First Bookes (1598) ... The Italian text was known to Spenser and Milton, but it was not until the 19th century that other partial translations were attempted, by Richard Wharton (1804), William Stewart Rose (1823), and Leigh Hunt (1846).
Unfortunately for his posthumous reputation, Boiardo fell a victim to the Italian vernacular culture wars.
Pietro Bembo's reformation of the language in 1525, the rediscovery of Aristotle's Poetics in the 1530s, and the incipient Counter-Reformation in the 1540s all caused it to fall from favour amongst critics and writers, including Torquato Tasso, who found it lacking on linguistic, theoretical, and moral grounds. Gradually, Boiardo's original version was supplanted by Francesco Berni's rifacimento (1542), a recasting of the poem in literary Tuscan, and by Lodovico Domenichi's contemporary revision, the publication of which (1544), significantly, coincided with the last edition of Boiardo to appear in the Renaissance in the original text.
It wasn't until the nineteenth century that Boiardo's original was rediscovered, and he began to take his proper place as one of the great Italian poets of the quattrocento.



Bibliography

  1. Orlando Innamorato (1483-1495)
    • Orlando Innamorato. 1483-1495. Trans. Charles Stanley Ross. 1989. Abridged Ed. The World's Classics. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995.
  2. Il Timone [comic play] (1487)
  3. Amorum libri tres [180 sonnets, canzoni, and madrigals] (1499)



Matteo Maria Boiardo: Orlando Innamorato (1655)



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Titian: Man with a Quilted Sleeve (1510)

Ludovico Ariosto
(1474–1533)

Ludovico Ariosto ... is best known as the author of the romance epic Orlando Furioso (1516). The poem, a continuation of Matteo Maria Boiardo's Orlando Innamorato, describes the adventures of Charlemagne, Orlando, and the Franks as they battle against the Saracens with diversions into many sideplots. The poem is transformed into a satire of the chivalric tradition. Ariosto composed the poem in the ottava rima rhyme scheme and introduced narrative commentary throughout the work.
Ariosto also coined the term "humanism" [umanesimo] for choosing to focus upon the strengths and potential of humanity, rather than only upon its role as subordinate to God. This led to Renaissance humanism.
- Wikipedia: Ludovico Ariosto
It's hard to exaggerate the far-ranging influence of Ariosto's epic poem. Its satire was far more subtle and subversive than Pulci's slapstick burlesque. The sheer pointlessness of chivalric endeavour was revealed through the endless sub-plots with which Ariosto ornamented the original bald plot of Charlemagne's struggle against the Moors of Spain.
These include Astolfo's famous journey to the Moon in search of Orlando's lost wits. He's successful in locating the bottle they've been store in, and manages to induce the mad knight to inhale them, thus restoring his equilibrium. Though assisted by John the Evangelist in his quest, which takes place in Elijah's fiery chariot, Astolfo is surprised to see that the Moon, far from being the perfect, crystalline sphere described by contemporary cosmology, is in fact a kind of rubbish heap for everything lost or mislaid on Earth.

G. F. Watts: Morgana & Orlando (1865)


The women in his story, too, are rather more proactive than the usual blushing subjects of romance. Angelica, the principal heroine, is perpetually in flight from one lovelorn swain or another, but Morgana (the original "fata Morgana"), twin sister of two other sorceresses, the good Logistilla and the evil Alcina, is on the point of destroying the world with her enchantments when she is defeated by the astute Orlando.

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Sir John Harington: Orlando furioso [Illustration] (1591)



Bibliography

  1. Orlando Furioso (1516-32)
    • Orlando Furioso. Introduzione di Silvio Pasquale. Note di Guglielmo Zappacosta. “I Classici Bietti”. Ed. Alberto Chiari. 1969. Milano: Casa Editrice Bietti, 1974.
    • Orlando furioso in English heroical verse / by Sr. Iohn Harington of Bathe Knight. London: Printed by G. Miller for J. Parker, 1634.
    • Orlando Furioso. Trans. Guido Waldman. 1974. The World’s Classics. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983.
    • Orlando Furioso (The Frenzy of Orlando): A Romantic Epic. Trans. Barbara Reynolds. Penguin Classics. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1975-77.
      1. Part One (1975)
      2. Part Two (1977)

    2. Secondary:

  2. Green, Roger Lancelyn. Into Other Worlds: Space Flight in Fiction, from Lucian to Lewis. London: Abelard-Schuman, 1957.
  3. Nicolson, Marjorie Hope. Voyages to the Moon. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1948.


Titian: Ludovico Ariosto (1532)



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Jacopo Bassano: Torquato Tasso (1566)

Torquato Tasso
(1544-1595)

Torquato Tasso ... was an Italian poet of the 16th century, known for his 1581 poem Gerusalemme liberata (Jerusalem Delivered), in which he depicts a highly imaginative version of the combats between Christians and Muslims at the end of the First Crusade, during the Siege of Jerusalem of 1099.
Tasso had mental illness and died a few days before he was to be crowned on the Capitoline Hill as the king of poets by Pope Clement VIII. His work was widely translated and adapted, and until the ... 20th century, he remained one of the most widely read poets in Europe.
- Wikipedia: Torquato Tasso
It's interesting that modern readers can more or less accept the endless poetic celebrations of Charlemagne's (alleged) victories over the Moors of Spain, but Tasso's absurd account of Godfrey of Bouillon ("Goffredo"), the leader of the First Crusade, leaves us cold.
This despite the fact that - like Ariosto - Tasso is really far more interested in the romantic entanglements of his semi-historical heroes with a series of completely fictional heroines: Armida, "a beautiful witch ... sent forth by the infernal senate to sow discord in the Christian camp"; Clorinda, "a brave female warrior ... [who] fights a duel with her devoted lover, and receives baptism at his hands as she lies dying"; and Erminia, "hopelessly in love with Tancredi."
As in the case of Boiardo, there are different versions of Tasso's epic available:
Before his death, he rewrote the poem virtually from scratch, under a new title (La Gerusalemme Conquistata, or "Jerusalem Conquered"). This revised version, however, has found little favor with either audiences or critics.

Paolo Domenico Finoglia: Clorinda attacks Tancredi (1640)



Bibliography

  1. Rinaldo (1562)
  2. Rime (1567-1593)
  3. Aminta: Favola boschereccia (1573)
    • Aminta: Favola boschereccia. Ed. C. E. J. Griffiths. Italian Texts. Ed. Kathleen Speight. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1972.
  4. La Gerusalemme Liberata (1575-81)
    • La Gerusalemme Liberata. 1580. Collezione Salani: I Classici. Ed. Enrico Bianchi. Firenze: Adriano Salani, Editore, 1924.
    • Godfrey of Bulloigne, or Jerusalem Delivered. Trans. Edward Fairfax. 1600. Ed. Robert Aris Willmott. Illustrated by Corbould. London: George Routledge and Co., 1858.
  5. Messaggiero (1582)
  6. Re Torrismondo (1587)
  7. Dialoghi (1578-1594)
  8. La Gerusalemme Conquistata (1593)
  9. Discorsi del poema eroico (1594)


Torquato Tasso: Gerusalemme liberata (1590)



Alessandro Tassoni ... was an Italian poet and writer from Modena, best known as the author of the mock-heroic poem La secchia rapita ("The Rape of the Bucket" [literally "The stolen bucket"]).
He was born in Modena to a noble family ... Having lost both parents at an early age, he was raised by the maternal grandfather, Giovanni Pellicciari. It was with Giovanni that, according to tradition, he first visited the bucket which was later to inspire his major work, in the belfry of Modena's Cathedral.
... He [graduated as] a law student, attending university in Modena, then in Bologna, Pisa and Ferrara ... He appears to have been a rowdy youth, living for some time in Nonantola, from where he was expelled in 1595, due to several incidents in which Tassoni had been involved as a member of a local street gang.
... In 1612 he published anonymously the booklet Le Filippiche in which he attacked the Spanish domination of parts of the Italian peninsula. Though he always denied having written it (probably for fear of Spanish retaliation), the work became famous enough to ingratiate Tassoni to the Charles Emmanuel I, Duke of Savoy, who, in 1618 hired him in Turin with the title of first secretary.
... He died in Modena. His fellow citizens remembered his life and work with a statue that can still be seen in front of the town symbol, the Ghirlandina.
- Wikipedia: Alessandro Tassoni
Tassoni's satirical mock-heroic epic about the theft of a bucket inspired French poet Nicolas Boileau's once-celebrated Le Lutrin [The Lectern] (1674-83).
This concept of "What mighty contests rise from trivial things", in its turn, is thought to have given rise to both Swift's "Battle of the Books" (1704) and Pope's Rape of the Lock (1712) - though Pope may also have been influenced by John Ozell's 1710 translation of La Secchia rapita into English as The Trophy-Bucket (somewhat opportunistically retitled The Rape of the Bucket in its 1715 "second edition").

Alessandro Tassoni: La Secchia Rapita (1739)



Bibliography

  1. La Secchia Rapita: Poema eroicomico (1622)
    • La Secchia Rapita: Poema eroicomico. 1622. Con la vita e le note da Robustiono Gironi. Milano: Dalla Società Tipografica de' Classici Italiani, 1806.





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Giorgio Vasari: Six Tuscan Poets (1544)
l-to-r: Cristoforo Landino, Marsilio Ficino, Francesco Petrarca, Giovanni Boccaccio, Dante Alighieri, and Guido Cavalcanti


If you want to have some idea of the accepted genealogy of pre-modern Italian poetry, the volume referred to at the head of this post is perhaps the best place to start. The four great poets whose principal works it includes in full are Dante, Petrarch, Ariosto and Tasso.
Only the first two of these could really be said to have maintained their ascendency. Dante is - hands down - the most widely read (and frequently translated) Italian poet in world literature. Petrarch is an essential figure in any history of Renaissance thought - as well as one of the greatest of love poets in his own right.
Ariosto, despite his obvious affinities with the tropes of modern Speculative Fiction, is little read outside literature classes: the immense length of his poem, and the decline of narrative verse as a medium for storytelling is probably principally responsible for this.
Tasso, so domninant in earlier centuries, and so frequently drawn on for subject matter by the European old masters, is now largely forgotten. He doesn't seem to speak to modernity as much as the cynical asides of the more humanistic Ariosto. Perhaps that will change, but it's hard to foresee much of a revival for him beyond his undoubted place in literary history.

Bibliography:
The Italian Renaissance
(c.1340-1550)

    Pietro Aretino (1492-1556)

  1. Sisters, Wives and Courtesans: Unexpurgated. Trans. Robert Eglesfield. New York: Belmont Books, 1967.
  2. Aretino’s Dialogues. Trans. Raymond Rosenthal. London: George Allen & Unwin, 1972.
  3. I Modi: The Sixteen Pleasures. An Erotic Album of the Italian Renaissance. With Giulio Romano, Marc-Antonio Raimondi, & Count Jean-Frédéric-Maximilien de Waldeck. Ed. & trans. Lynne Lawler. 1984. London: Peter Owen Publishers, 1988.
  4. Selected Letters. Trans. George Bull. Penguin Classics. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1976.

    5. Giovanni Boccaccio (1313-1375)

  5. Decameron / Filocolo / Ameto / Fiammetta. Ed. Enrico Bianchi, Carlo Salinari & Natalino Sapegno. La Letteratura Italiana: Storia e Testi, 8. Milano: Riccardo Ricciardi Editore, 1952.
  6. Il Decameron. 1350-53. Ed. Carlo Salinari. 1963. 2 vols. Universale Laterza, 26-27. 1966. Torino: Editori Laterza, 1975.
  7. The Decameron. 1350-53. Trans. J. M. Rigg. 1903. Introduction and Illustrations by Louis Chalon. 1921. 2 vols. London: Privately Printed for the Navarre Society Limited, n.d.
  8. The Decameron. 1350-53. Trans. G. H. McWilliam. Penguin Classics. 1972. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1978.
  9. Elegia de Madonna Fiammetta. Ed. Carlo Salinari & Natalino Sapegno. 1952. Classici Ricciardi 10. Torino: Giulio Einaudi Editore, 1976.
  10. Amorous Fiammetta: Revised from the Only English Translation. 1343-44. Trans. Bartholomew Yong. 1587. Introduction by Edward Hutton. London: Privately Printed for the Navarre Society, 1926.
  11. Filocolo: Scelta. Ed. Carlo Salinari & Natalino Sapegno. 1952. Classici Ricciardi 27. Torino: Giulio Einaudi Editore, 1976.
  12. Corbaccio. Ed. Giorgio Ricci. Introduzione di Natalino Sapegno. 1952 & 1965. Classici Ricciardi 44. Torino: Giulio Einaudi Editore, 1977.

    13. Sandro Botticelli (c.1445–1510)

  13. Clark, Kenneth. The Drawings by Sandro Botticelli for Dante’s Divine Comedy: After The Originals in the Berlin Museums and the Vatican. London: Thames & Hudson, 1976.
  14. Jowell, Frances. Botticelli. The Masters, 4. Ed. Sir John Rothenstein. 1963. Bristol: Knowledge Publications, 1965.

    15. Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475-1564)

  15. Rime. Ed. Ettore Barelli. Introduzione di Giovanni Testori. Poesia. Biblioteca Universale Rizzoli. 1975. Milano: Rizzoli Editore, 1981.
  16. The Poems. Ed. & trans. Christopher Ryan. J. M. Dent. London: Orion Publishing Group, 1996.
  17. Luciano Berti. All the Works of Michelangelo. Trans. Susan Glasspool. Firenze: Bonechi Editore, n.d. [c.1981].
  18. Targoff, Ramie. Renaissance Woman: The Life of Vittoria Colonna. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2018.

    19. Baldassare Castiglione (1478–1529)

  19. The Book of the Courtier. 1528. Trans. Charles S. Singleton. Illustrations ed. Edgard de N. Mayhew. Anchor Books. New York: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1959.

    20. Benvenuto Cellini (1500-1571)

  20. La Vita. 1728. Ed. Guido Davico Bonino. Nuova Universale Einaudi, 149. Torino: Giulio Einaudi editore, 1973.
  21. Memoirs. 1728. Trans. Anne MacDonell. 1903. Everyman’s Library, 51. 1907. London: J. M. Dent & Sons Ltd. / New York: E. P. Dutton & Co. Inc., 1952.
  22. The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini. 1728. Trans. George Bull. 1956. London: The Folio Society, 1966.

    23. Francesco Colonna (c.1433-1527)

  23. Hypnerotomachia Poliphili: The Strife of Love in a Dream. The Entire Text Translated for the First Time into English with an Introduction by Joscelyn Godwin with the Original Woodcut Illustrations. 1499. London: Thames & Hudson, 1999.
  24. Caldwell, Ian, & Dustin Thomason. The Rule of Four. New York: The Dial Press, 2004.
  25. Godwin, Joscelyn. The Real Rule of Four. 2004. London: Arrow Books, 2005.

    26. Giovanni della Casa (1503-1556)

  26. Galateo, or The Book of Manners. 1558. Trans. R. S. Pine-Coffin. Penguin Classics. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1958.

    27. Marsilio Ficino (1433-1499)

  27. The Book of Life: Liber de Vita (or De Vita Triplici). 1489. Trans. Charles Boer. 1980. Rev. ed. Woodstock, Connecticut: Spring Publications, Inc., 1994.
  28. The Letters, Volume 1. Trans. the Members of the Language Department of the School of Economic Science, London. Preface by Paul Oskar Kristeller. 1975. London: Shepheard-Walwyn (Publishers) Ltd., 1988.
  29. The Letters, Volume 2: Being a Translation of Liber III. Trans. the Members of the Language Department of the School of Economic Science, London. 1978. London: Shepheard-Walwyn (Publishers) Ltd., 1982.

    30. Niccolò Machiavelli (1469–1527)

  30. Opere. Ed. Mario Bonfantini. La Letteratura Italiana: Storia e Testi, 29. Milano: Riccardo Ricciardi Editore, 1954.
  31. La Mandragola ed Altri Scritti Letterari. Ed. Gianni Gervasoni. Biblioteca di Letteratura. Milano: Casa Editrice Carlo Signorelli S.A., 1954.
  32. The Prince. Trans. Luigi Ricci. 1903. Rev. E. R. P. Vincent. 1935. Introduction by Christian Gauss. 1952. A Mentor Classic. New York: The New American Library, 1962.
  33. The Prince and The Discourses. Introduction by Max Lerner. Modern Library College Editions, T25. New York: The Modern Library, 1950.
  34. The History of Florence and of the Affairs of Italy from the Earliest Times to the Death of Lorenzo the Magnificent. Together with The Prince and Various Historical Tracts. Ed. Gianni Gervasoni. Bohn’s Standard Library. London: George Bell & Sons, 1906.

    35. Lorenzo de' Medici (1449-1492)

  35. Scritti Scelti di Lorenzo de’ Medici. Ed. Emiilo Bigi. 1955. Second Edition, 1965. Torino: Unione Tipografico – Editrice Torinese, 1971.

    36. Francesco Petrarca (1304-1374)

  36. Le Rime. Preface by G. Stiavelli. Biblioteca Classica Popolare, IX. Roma: Edoardo Perino, Tipografo Editore, 1888.
  37. Canzoniere. Ed. Gianfranco Contini. Annotazioni di Daniele Ponchiroli. Nuova Universale Einaudi, 41. Torino: Giulio Einaudi editore, 1968.
  38. The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch. Now First Completely Translated into English Verse by Various Hands. With a Life of the Poet by Thomas Campbell. Bohn’s Illustrated Library. London: Henry G. Bohn, 1859.
  39. Selected Poems. Ed. T. Gwynfor Griffith & P. R. J. Hainsworth. Italian Texts. Ed. Kathleen Speight. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1971.
  40. Petrarch’s Lyric Poems: The Rime Sparse and Other Lyrics. Trans. Robert M. Durling. 1976. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1999.
  41. Petrarch in English. Ed. Thomas P. Roche. Penguin Poets in Translation. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 2005.
  42. L’Abbé Roman. Vie de Pétrarque, Publiée par l’Athénée de Vaucluse, Augmentée de la première traduction qui ait parut en Français, de la Lettre adressée à la Posterité par ce Poète célèbre: Avec la liste des Souscripteurs qui ont concouru à lui faire ériger un Monument à Vaucluse, le jour seculaire de sa naissance, 20 Juillet 1804, 1er Thermidor an 12. Avignon: Chez Me. Ve. Seguin, An XII [1804].

    43. Gian Francesco Poggio (1380-1459)

  43. The Facetiae. Translated by Bernhardt J. Hurwood. New York & London; Award Books & Tandem Books, 1968.

    44. Angelo Poliziano (1454-1494)

  44. Tutte le Poesie Italiane. Ed. Gustavo Rodolfo Ceriello. Biblioteca Universale Rizzoli, 423-425. Milano: Rizzoli Editore, 1952.

    45. Secondary Literature

  45. Buttura, Antonio., ed. I Quattro Poeti Italiani con una Scelta di Poesie Italiane dal 1200 sino a’ Nostri Tempi. Parigi: Presso Lefevre, Librajo / Baudry, Librajo, 1833.
  46. Drummond, William of Hawthornden. "Ben Jonson's Conversations." Ben Jonson: The Complete Poems. Ed. George Parfitt. Penguin English Poets. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1975. 459-80.
  47. Kay, George R., ed. The Penguin Book of Italian Verse: With Plain Prose Translations of Each Poem. 1958. The Penguin Poets. Ed. J. M. Cohen. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1960.
  48. Lewis, C. S. The Allegory of Love: a Study in Medieval Tradition. 1936. London: Oxford University Press, 1970.
  49. Lewis, C. S. English Literature in the Sixteenth Century, excluding Drama. 1954. Oxford History of English Literature. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1965.
  50. Lewis, C. S. Studies in Medieval and Renaissance Literature. Ed. Walter Hooper. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1966.
  51. Penman, Bruce, ed. Five Italian Renaissance Comedies. Machiavelli: The Mandragola; Ariosto: Lena; Aretino: The Stablemaster; Gl’Intronati: The Deceived; Guarini: The Faithful Shepherd. 1558. Trans. George Bull, Guy Williams & Bruce Penman. Penguin Classics. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1978.
  52. Poliziano, Angelo et al. Teatro Antico: Tragico, Comico, Pastorale, Drammatico. Parnaso Italiano, ovvero Raccolta de’ Poeti Classic Italiani d’ogni genere, d’ogni età, d’ogni metro, e del più scelto tra gli ottimi, diligentemente riveduti sugli originali più accreditati, e adornati di figure in rame. Tomo XVII. Venezia: Presso Antonio Zatta e figli, 1785.
  53. Ross, James Bruce, & Mary Martin McLaughlin, ed. The Portable Renaissance Reader. 1953. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1977.
    54.



Alessandro Tassoni: The Rape of the Bucket. Trans John Ozell (1715)



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Sir John Harington: Orlando furioso [colophon] (1591)



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