Orlando Furioso by Ludovico Ariosto

*contains spoilers*


“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.” From this first complex sentence we get more than just the explicit promise of tales of knights errant in the time of Charlemagne, as he fights off the Saracens laying siege to Paris – we also begin to understand the way in which Ariosto will tell his story: like a tapestry unfurling, episode by episode, with pockets of treats hidden in the cloth if you’re willing to look hard enough. The weight of the historical context of the piece is imbued in each fibre, and the temptation to quickly pop open your laptop to get to grips with the complex nature of Ariosto’s Europe is simply too much, but each venture into the past is as rewarding as the last – as is each page of this thoroughly beautiful piece.


And it’s refreshingly forward thinking for its time. Consider how Ariosto constantly derides the hypocrisy of the patriarchal society that persists even today; “…why is the woman to be punished or blamed for doing with one or several men the very thing a man does with as many women as he will, and receives not punishment but praise for it?” Does the word “slut” mean anything to you? Or the fact that that particular word is predominantly associated with women who choose to sleep around and not with men? Even Ariosto, operating as a male in an oppressively patriarchal society, was able to fathom this. Why can’t men and women get this today? On talking of the achievements of women being undermined by male authors of old, Ariosto is very astute in picking up on the general insecurity that men who oppress or undermine women suffer; “They…would never allow women the upper hand, but did their utmost to keep them down, as though the fair sex’s honour would cloud their own, as mist obscures the sun.” Heaven forbid that a woman should be noble and intelligent enough to wound the delicate pride and honour of a male…!


Indeed, the brave knights in these delicious tales spend so much of their time defending their honour against their enemies that their loved ones are left to wallow in rejection and loneliness. The fearsome and brilliant Bradamant, with a reputation to make most knights around the world quake in their spurs, is desperate to see her beloved Ruggiero again after so many times being drawn or torn away from his embrace, and wonders into the night sky as she awaits his return; “You assist those you should be harrying; those whom you should help, you persecute.” And she has a point. In constantly thinking of his own pride and honour in the eyes of his enemies, Ruggiero has such little time for his loved ones.

The wealth of stories that came before this glorious epic verse are living and breathing within the cloth. Here we see ‘The Iliad’, there ‘The Odyssey’, over yonder we sense some structuring akin to ‘Metamorphoses’, and in this pocket is a hint of ‘The Divine Comedy’. The battle scenes are what really shine, and they could be taken from any of the battle scenes that took place on the plains of Ilium; “He [Ruggiero]…sliced mounted men right down to their horses so that they toppled to the ground, in two equal halves, one to each side…” Throughout the sieges, the journeys over continents atop the Hippogryph (Ariosto’s invention), the shipwrecks, the scenes of loving devotion, the epic battles, Guido Waldeman’s translation actually bubbles on the page in triumph; “The blazing sun beat down upon the hill nearby, which reflected back a heat so intense that it set the air simmering, and the sand: it would have taken less heat to liquefy glass. Every bird sat silent in the soft shade; alone the cricket amid the thick, leafy shrubs shrilled his monotonous refrain, which filled, which deafened, the hills and valleys, the sea and sky.”


And I’ll leave you with that.

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