Orlando Innamorato (Orlando in
Love) by Matteo Maria Boiardo
Overlooked Joy
Like Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso and Tasso’s Jerusalem Delivered, Boiardo’s
chivalric stories of lords and ladies first entertained the culturally innovative
court of Ferrara in the Italian Renaissance. Inventive, humorous,
inexhaustible, the story recounts Orlando’s love-stricken pursuit of the
fairest of her Sex, Angelica (in Milton’s terms) through a fairyland that
combines the military valors of Charlemagne’s knights and their famous
horses with the enchantments of King Arthur’s court. Today it seems
more than ever appropriate to offer a new, unabridged edition of Boiardo’s
Orlando Innamorato, the first Renaissance epic about the common
customs of, and the conflicts between, Christian Europe and Islam. Having
extensively revised his earlier translation for general readers, Charles
Ross has added headings and helpful summaries to Boiardo’s cantos.
Tenses have been regularized, and terms of gender and religion have
been updated, but not so much as to block the reader’s encounter with
how Boiardo once viewed the world. Neglect of Italian romances robs us
of a whole species of pleasure and narrows our very conception of

literature. It is as if a man left out Homer, or Elizabethan drama, or the
novel. For like these, the romantic epic of Italy is one of the great trophies
of the European genius: a genuine kind, not to be replaced by any other,
and illustrated by an extremely copious and brilliant production. It is one of
the successes, the undisputed achievements. —C. S. Lewis
Personal Review: Orlando Innamorato (Orlando in Love) by
Matteo Maria Boiardo
Hello Amazon people. Amazon People! Feel my love. Feel my joy. Feel my
fire. This is not so much a review of "Orlando Innamorato", than it is an
overview of Italian Renaissance epic. I hope Amazon lets me do it. I have
written a couple professors, but now I want to share it with the world. I had
heard of Ariosto and Torquato Tasso, but was fascinated to learn there is
an entire shelf full of these Italian epics. And now in recent years there has
been a spate of translations of some of the other epics: of course Boiardo
and Luigi Pulci's "Morgante". And I recently discovered on Amazon an
edition published in the "I Tatti Library" of Teofilo Folengo's "Baldus".
Interestingly, I Tatti. . is Italian authors who wrote in Latin; so apparently
Folengo's epic is more Latinate. Moreover, another epic writer is
Giangiorgio Trissino with his "Italia Liberata. .". Poor Trissino has the
dubious distinction of being one of the most maligned authors known. After
Trissino, another writer who shared a similar fate is T. Tasso's father,
Bernardo Tasso and his "Amadigi". And further, another writer is Luigi
Alamanni, who apparently wrote two epics. There is an entry for Alamanni
in "THe New Arthurian Encyclopedia"; this entry is vague as to the quality
of the epics. Another writer is Giraldi Cinthio. Cinthio has some notoriety,
because he wrote Italian Novelle in the tradition of Boccaccio. Moreover,
he wrote all the major genres of the day: epic, again novelle, drama, and
even criticism. And furthermore, a main point of this letter is to consider the
following; is there perhaps an undiscovered masterpiece among the lot of
them? Or might some of the maligned authors be reevaluated? Finally, see
A.B. Giamatti's "The Earthly Paradise and the Renaissance Epic". I think
that is where I got this list, he mentiions others too; treating them harshly.
Also see: "The Cambridge History of Italian Literature". As a footnote many
people do not know that Boccaccio wrote a full length epic; "Teseida". Can
it be bulked with these other Renaissance epics? And as to its quality?
And has it ever been translated into English?-(No) Thank You
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