ARIOSTO, LUDOVICO. —
I. LIFE
He was born on 8 Sept. 1474 in Reggio Emilia to Count Niccolò, captain of the citadel, and Daria Malaguzzi Valeri. After moving with his family to Ferrara, he reluctantly pursued legal studies for five years, then turned with enthusiasm to literature under the humanist Gregorio Elladio da Spoleto, who introduced him to the classics. When his father died in 1500, he interrupted his studies and, as the eldest son, accepted the captaincy of the fortress at Canossa from Duke Ercole I d’Este for the biennium 1502–1503 to support his large family. Later, he became a familiar of Cardinal Ippolito, who entrusted him with important diplomatic missions but distracted him from his inner world. The election of Leo X to the papal throne in 1513 drew him to Rome, where he met with disappointment; instead, he found lasting affection in Alessandra Benucci, a widow of Tito Strozzi, whom he secretly married in his later years. In 1517, dismissed for refusing to accompany the cardinal to Hungary, he was taken into service by Duke Alfonso I with a modest stipend that allowed him to dedicate himself quietly to poetry. In 1522, when his ducal salary was reduced due to wartime difficulties, he was forced to accept the commissionership of Garfagnana, which he administered with honesty and wisdom. Returning to Ferrara, he spent his final years in tranquility, dreaming and working in the small house he had purchased in the contrada Mirasole, where he died on 6 July 1533. He entrusted the memory of his features to Titian and Dosso Dossi, and his fame to the *Orlando Furioso*.2. WORKS
Ariosto’s earliest poetic output was in Latin: the fragment in hexameters *De laudibus philosophiae*, the epithalamium for the wedding of Lucrezia Borgia to Prince Alfonso in 1503, and above all the *Carmina*, which reveal familiarity with the classics and an assimilative mastery of sources. His study of the fourteenth-century poets instilled in him a sense of his own poetic abilities in the vernacular. The *Rime*, influenced by Petrarch, display formal elegance rarely deepened by emotional intensity, while the *Ecloga* of 1506 echoes the dismay he felt at the conspiracy of Giulio d’Este. The seven *Satires* in terza rima, written between 1517 and 1525, are confidential autobiographical reflections in the Horatian manner that open a window onto the author’s soul. An early attempt at an epic poem in the vernacular, *Obizzide*, intended to celebrate the Este family, remained unfinished; a fragmentary episode titled *Scudo della regina Elena* was excluded from the *Orlando Furioso*, and the *Cinque Canti*, a colorless continuation of the poem, were published posthumously by his son Virginio. Passionate about the theater, besides the Ovidian drama *Tisbe* (now lost), he composed five comedies that were morally questionable, which,3. THE “FURIOSO” IN THE LIGHT OF CHRISTIAN ETHICS AND THE SUPERNATURAL
If we now set aside aesthetic concerns and isolate the moral substratum of the poem, we find an Ariosto who, like Angelica of his own tale, appears and vanishes in a flash. For, detached as he was from the world of his dreams, he moves with ease—almost with levity—through the full range of human affections without preference or deep commitment.Ariosto’s morality is marked by a foundation of wholesome goodness that inclines him toward domestic affections, friendship, courtesy, compassion for others, and loyalty. Added to this is a constant sense of balance that preserves him from licentious libertinism, prevents moral rebellion despite the adversities of his life, and expresses itself not in coarse laughter but in discreet smiles; it restrains ambition and envisages an ideal of modest, serene living. Nor is a sense of dignity lacking, which, even in necessary flattery, keeps him from servile cringing—a fault unjustly imputed to him by Settembrini. He upholds marriage as a bulwark against moral excesses; in the third satire, he advises his cousin Annibale to choose a virtuous wife. Some argue that with Orlando’s madness he meant to deplore the waste of energy inherent in the allurements of love. Finally, if he admires the virtues of intellect, he prizes those of the heart even more highly; one need only read Satire VII to M. Pietro Bembo in this regard.
Turning from the man to the poem, the moral lines lose their sharpness and intersect and overlap, like the tangled paths of his paladins; one might say that the genius of Good and the genius of Evil have met in the *Furioso*. The triumph of caprice and sensuality is balanced by a pervasive melancholy of the senses that weighs upon the entire fabric. The figures of Isabella, Ginevra, Fiordiligi, Logistilla, Bradamante, and Marfisa find their dark counterparts in Fiordispina, Fiammetta, Doralice, Gabrina, and Alcina. At the boundary between these two moral worlds, as if to reconcile them, stands Angelica, who long flees with cunning, leaves with arrogance, but finally redeems herself in love, even crowned with a sense of motherhood at the bedside of the wounded youth Medoro.
The poet, who trembles with chaste vertigo in delineating the profiles of his tender, loving creatures, does not shrink from lingering with reproachable levity over scenes of licentiousness.
A measure of balance is restored, however, when we observe that the entire work breathes a tendency toward a higher justice, which has led some to compare it with Dante’s moral rigor. It must also be noted that the poem essentially resolves into an exaltation of Christian thought incarnate in chivalry, with its ideals of defending the Faith and protecting the weak, realized by a noble company of heroes: Orlando, Rinaldo, Ruggero, Astolfo, Brandimarte, and Zerbino.
Yet it remains true that Ariosto did not intend to write as a moralist; thus, any attempt to distill arcane ethical allegories from the poem is a futile labor. At most, one might say that the pervasive sense of probity in the man Ariosto radiated, unconsciously, into his work, even as it often indulged in morally censurable excesses.
Finally, the terms of the “moral seriousness” attributed to the *Furioso* by some critics must be kept within proper bounds. This is a morality without transcendence or connection to the divine; a secular, pagan morality that does not surpass the ideal of the ancient sage. While it is an exaggeration to dwell on the poem’s religious elements, conferring upon it an austerity anticipating the Counter-Reformation, equally arbitrary is the identification of Ariosto’s jesting with the later Voltairean sneer.
We may affirm that Ariosto was not deliberately impious but rather indifferent and distracted. Nor can it be denied that a turn toward seriousness is evident in the poem’s final cantos: with the passing years, even levity has diminished or vanished; after the fantastic outpouring, the structure of the *Orlando* shifts from the romance toward the severe tone of epic; historical conditions had become too sorrowful not to reach, at least as a tempering echo, Ariosto’s heart; and death knocks insistently at the door, summoning the poet to tardy wisdom.
the plays, modeled on Plautus and Terence, nonetheless mark the birth of the new Italian theater: *La Cassaria*, *I Suppositi*, *Il Negromante*, *La Lena*, and *Gli Studenti* (the latter completed by his brother