Icons in Time: Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso and Chivalric Literature through the Ages

Mac Carthy, Ita

Abstract

For five centuries, Ludovico Ariosto’s Orlando furioso has enjoyed the status of literary icon. Traversing space and time, it has travelled within and outside Italy, often in the company of Boiardo’s Orlando Innamorato and Tasso’s Gerusalemme Liberata, to be widely read across borders of class, gender and race. This chapter introduces Ariosto and his iconic companions to unfamiliar readers. It explores how the Furioso comes to represent manifold things relating to Italy and its past: from the chivalric imaginary to evolutions in the epic-romance genre; from the culture and society of early modern Emilia Romagna to the Italian Renaissance as a whole. Introducing a little-known chapter of the Furioso’s nineteenth-century fortunes, it examines how Ariosto and Boiardo were received in Britain through the refracted light of Italian Unification and goes on to reflect on how Italian icons can be used or abused, then as now, both at home and abroad.

Citation

Mac Carthy, I. (2025). Icons in Time: Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso and Chivalric Literature through the Ages. In S. Jossa (Ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Italian Literature. Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780197613955.013.45

• Online Publication Date: Feb 19, 2025
• Publication Date: Feb 20, 2025
• Deposit Date: Feb 28, 2025
• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Book Title: The Oxford Handbook of Italian Literature
• Chapter Number: 4.5
• ISBN: 9780197613955.013.45
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780197613955.013.45
• Keywords: Ariosto, Boiardo, Tasso, chivalric literature, literary icons, iconicity, Britain, Ireland
• Public URL: https://durham-repository.worktribe.com/output/2880664
• Contract Date: Sep 27, 2024