Ascoli 'Fier Pastor'

Renaissance Society of America
Ariosto and the "Fier Pastor": Form and History in Orlando Furioso
Author(s): Albert Russell Ascoli
Source: Renaissance Quarterly, Vol. 54, No. 2 (Summer, 2001), pp. 487-522
Published by: The University of Chicago Press on behalf of the Renaissance Society of
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Ariostoand the "FierPastor'
Formand Historyin OrlandoFurioso
by ALBERT RUSSELL ASCOLI
This essay exploresthe formal means (a variant of the medieval romance technique of
entrelacement)bywhichLudovicoAriostosOrlandoFuriosorepresents and commentson con-
temporary events,particularlythe threatsposed by Frenchand Spanishinvasionsand by the
interventionistpolitics of PopesJulius II and LeoX Ariosto'streatmentof the latterfigure
exemplifiesboth the specificityof the interplay betweenform and history in the Furioso
Innamoratoand its innovativecharacterwith respecttoprecursors, notablyBoiardo'sOrlando
Innamorato.A final sectionconsidersthechangingsignificanceofsuchtopicalmaterialbetween
thefirsteditionof 1516 (whenLeowasalive)and thefinaleditionof 1532 (longafterLeosdeath,
and underverydiferenthistoricalcircumstances).
I. QUESTIONS
t has now been almost two decades since a wave of historical and cultural
criticism and theory reversed the dominant "textualist" trend in North
American literary studies that had led us from the New Criticism through
Structuralism and into the theoretical arcana of post-Structuralism. This
shift, true to its own historical character,has never been absolute or "pure."
At its best, in fact, the imperative to "alwayshistoricize" has been comple-
mented by a lingering textualist awareness of the complex and pervasive
mediations that language and other forms of signifying representation must
be accorded in any attempt to reestablishthe bonds - referential, ideologi-
cal, or other - between world and literarywork. And as the genealogical and
methodological links that still join the New Historicism and cultural critique
to their formalist precursors and ancestors (New Criticism and Structural-
ism) have become more apparent over time, the need to understand the
relationship between the form of a literarywork and its multiple historicities
has become more and more pressing, though no less difficult to satisfy.
In this essay I will consider a text, Ariosto's Orlandofurioso, that bene-
fited immensely from the proliferation of sophisticated methods of formal
analysis in the 1960s and 1970s, precisely because its structure is so ex-
tremely complex - its mode of signification so elaborate and, often
enough, so oblique. At the same time, the Furiosodisplays its author's keen
awarenessof the forms of cultural and political crisis that he individually, the
Ferraresesociety of which he was a part specifically, and the Italian peninsula
generally were each undergoing in the first third of the sixteenth century.
The poem offers anachronistic fictions of chivalric heroism and errant desire
as a means of at least temporarily eluding and even forgetting imminent
Renaissance
Quarterly54 (2001): 487-522 [487]
488 RENAISSANCE QUARTERLY
threats not only to particularregimes (like that of the Este family that ruled
Ferraraand patronized Ariosto, however inadequately), but also to an entire
way of life (the aristocratichumanism that had flourished under the political
equilibrium that persisted during much of the Quattrocento among the sev-
eral autonomous states dotting the Italian peninsula).1 The Furioso, then,
presents an especially challenging test case for exploring the intricate rela-
tions between linguistic-poetic structure and historical circumstance, in a
way that - I will argue - can take account of both textualist and historicist
concerns, while qualifying the claims of both to methodological superiority.
This essay will further elaborate my earlier account of the Furioso as a
poem of "crisisand evasion," now with a special focus on questions of his-
torical, political, and military crisis.2 It begins with a synoptic review of
important recent work on the immense poem's hybrid form, then offers a
general description of the Furioso'sbasic signifying structures and proce-
dures, emphasizing the ways in which historical materials are incorporated
side by side with "intertextual"literary referencesand "intratextual"connec-
tions linking one part of the poem with another. This is accomplished - we
will see - in a uniquely Ariostan adaptation of the romance compositional
technique of entrelacement,or interlace that he had inherited from a long
and well established tradition, and especially from his great Ferrareseprecur-
sor, Matteo Maria Boiardo, whose unfinished Orlando innamorato the
Furiososets out to complete. I will then suggest (via a close reading of a sin-
gle, exemplary canto) how those structures and procedures can be seen not
only as the means of representing and containing (containing by represent-
ing, apotropaically) cultural crisis,3but also as a response to and a product of
extreme historical pressures- above all the threat to Italy generallyfrom the
violent incursions of European nation-states and from its own foolish and
ambitious leaders, and the threat to Ferraraspecifically from the imperial pa-
pacy that had emerged in the early Cinquecento.4
Important work on the form of the Furiosohas recently been done on at
least three fronts. The first is the "intertextual"question of Ariosto'sborrow-
1SeeBigi, 10 and passim.

2InAriostos BitterHarmonyI arguedthat thereare"threeversionsof crisisto which the
Furiosomay be referred:crisesof an historicalepoch (whetherpolitical,cultural,or religious),
crisesof the self caughtin its temporalpredicament,and crisesof the processof referenceit-
self' (Ascoli,1987, 15). I took as a methodologicalpremise,in polemicwith deconstruction,
the claim that "itwill not do to privilegethe 'crisisof reference'in Ariostooverpossibleref-
erenceto variouscrises- historical,psychological,or literary,as maybe"(42). I would add,
in this context,that neitherwill it do to privilege"historicalcrisis"overquestionsof form.
3Cf. Fortini,14; Carne-Ross,1976, 153.
4Stinger,esp. 235-54.
ARIOSTOAND THE "FIERPASTOR" 489
ings - of episode, character,image, phrase,and narrativetechnique -

froma varietyof literaryprecursors.5
Notable,for my purposes,arethe debts
to Boiardo's long chivalric poem, Orlando innamorato;6to Virgil's imperial
epic, which furnishesthe model for the dynasticfable of Bradamanteand
Ruggiero,and which competesformallywith Boiardanromancefor generic
dominancethroughoutthe poem;7and to Dante'sCommedia,swhich, de-
spite its prominent role as a target of Ariostan irony against theological
solutionsto humanproblems,alsofunctionsas a highlyproductivemodelof
a poem thatconfrontsand absorbshistoricalcrisis.The second,and perhaps
most highlydeveloped,criticaltendencyfocusesattentionon the "intratex-
tual"questionof narrativestructure,and specificallythe poem'sdeployment
of a variantof the practiceof narrativeentrelacement developedin the tradi-
tion of medieval romance, that is, the simultaneous unfolding and
juxtapositionof multiple charactersand plots, interspersedwith autono-
mous or semi-autonomous"episodes."9 The last trend,to which I will turn
briefly at the end,
essay's is reflectedby growingbodyof criticismexploring
a
the significanceof the changesintroducedbetweenthe firstand lasteditions
of the Furioso,typicallycorrelatingthose changesto dramaticshifts in so-
cio-politicalconditionsbetween1516 and 1532.10
Muchof the bestrecentcriticismon the Furiosohasin factfocusedon its
problematicrelationshipto the categoryof romancein eitheran "intertextual"
or an "intratextual" sense,or both,with specialattentionto the way that nar-
rativestructuresgenerateand complicatethe processof poetic signification.
The problemhastypicallybeenexploredthroughtwo relatedtopics:first,the
tensionbetweenwhatis calledthe romancetendencyto an inconclusiveopen-
nessandevasivenessof structure,on the one hand,and,on the other,the epic
driveto closure;"andsecond,the techniqueof narrativeinterlaceitself.12
5Rajna;Parker;Javitch,1984 and 1985;Ascoli, 1987; Looney,1996; Martinez,1999.

6Rajna;Bruscagli, 1983; Quint, 1979; Marinelli; Baldan;Ross, 1989; Sangirardi;
Cavallo,1998.
7Fichter;Sitterson.
8Blasucci;Ossola;Parker;Segre;Johnson-Haddad; Ascoli, 1987 and2000a; Biow;Mar-
tinez 1999.
90n romanceentrelacement generally,see Lot and Vinaver.ForAriosto'srelationshipto
the tradition,see Delcorno-Branca,Bigi, and Beer,as well as Rajna'scatalogueof romance
sources. For influential discussions of Ariosto'snarrativetechnique in relatedterms, see
Carne-Ross,1966 and 1976 (esp. 164, 201) and Donato. Javitch,1984, has rightlystressed
that Ovid also offersa model forAriostaninterlace.
'?Caretti;Moretti, 1977 and 1984; Saccone,1983; Casadei,1988b.
"Quint, 1979; Parker;Ceserani;Zatti, 1990; Casadei,1992.
'Weaver;Javitch,1980 and 1988; Dalla Palma.
Though both topics can be understood as "intratextual"features of the

Furioso, they have most often been explored in the "intertextual," liter-
ary-historical terms of Ariosto's relationship to his precursorBoiardo, whose
Innamoratowas left unfinished at its author'sdeath in 1494, and which the
Furioso ostensibly completes (although Ariosto - invidiously - never
makes explicit referenceto his predecessor).13Seen from the point of view of
romance entrelacement,Ariosto clearly imitates and even considerably elab-
orates Boiardo's already derivative narrativepraxis, a praxis which seems to
be most responsible for the effects of openness and endlessness that indeed
characterizethe Innamoratoas it has come down to us.14On the other hand,
Riccardo Bruscagli has shown that while in Boiardo the knights move across
the landscape driven by an open-ended ventura (chance, happenstance), in
Ariosto, by contrast, they are motivated by goal-oriented inchieste (quests)
that tend toward closure. Quint has subsequently extended this point by ar-
guing that in the Furioso,Ariosto, especially over the last twelve cantos of the
poem, acts to impose an epic, neo-Virgilian conclusion on the romance
structure he took over from Boiardo.
In the drive to characterizethe connections and discontinuities between
the two poemi in narrativeand generic terms, however, critics have tended to
overlook some of the most substantive ways in which both the form and the
content of the Furiosodepart from the Innamorato.The first major claim of
this essay is that the attempt to make narrative- romance, epic, or both
definitional for the poetics of the Furioso,for all its usefulness, has not fully
and adequately described the formal specificity and novelty of the Furioso,or
its basic modes of signification, and in particularhas not understood the de-
'3Fewcriticshavetakenthe Furiososcharacteras "sequel"quite as literallyas Torquato
Tassowho, in his DiscorsidellArtePoetica(111, 115-17, 120-21), insiststhat the two Orlan-
dosmust be consideredformallyas a singleentity.
14Quint,1979;cf. Carne-Ross,1976, 205; Sitterson.Cavallo,1998, argueswith convic-
tion and good evidence that Ariosto'srewriting (and suppression)of various Boiardan
episodesis designedto effacethe signsthat the thirdbook of the Innamorato wastendingto-
wardclosure.But Cavallo'spoint, thoughan importantcorrectiveto dismissivetreatmentsof
Boiardo'sartistry,does not canceltwo basicfacts:1) that the Innamorato was neverfinished
and thus is necessarilyexperiencedas "open";and 2) that whateverconclusionsthe poem
might have reachedif its authorhad lived, they arenot foreseenfrom the outset, nor inte-
gratedinto its structurethroughout,as they arein the Furioso.HereAriosto'srecourseto the
formof genealogicalepic (seeFichter),as againstimitationof and/orallusionto Virgil,dearly
separatesthe Furiosofromits precursor.It is perhapsrelevantto note thatjust asAriostotends
to makeus forgetthe veryrealadvancesin the integrationof epic andromancecarriedout by
Boiardo,so Tasso'slaterand much more rigiduse of epic form - which he specificallyop-
posesto the hybridmonsterof BoiardoplusAriosto- hastendedto concealthe factthat,up
to its own day,Furiosowas perhapsthe closestthing to Virgilianepic everwrittenin the ver-
nacular.On Tasso'sinvidioustreatmentof Ariosto,see Ferguson;Zatti, 1996.
gree to which that specificity is both historically produced and linked tightly
to historical content. In fact, notwithstanding the foregrounding of the Vir-
gilian genealogical plot in the Furioso, especially at the beginning (canto 3)
and the end (cantos 44-46), and the historical accident of the Innamorato's
unfinishedness, the later poem is more similar to the earlier poem in its use
of narrative interlace than it is different from it. Indeed, it has been recog-
nized at least since Pio Rajna'sclassic 1900 study of the Furioso's"fonti" that
Boiardo clearly excelled Ariosto in sheer narrative inventiveness. Instead, I
argue, the most cogent differences, both formal and semantic, between the
two are not primarily narratological. In fact, the issue of narrativestructure
might best be placed under the larger rubric of figure and trope, specifically
the master trope of perspectival irony with which the poem has been consis-
tently associated, at least since DeSanctis and Croce.15
In formal terms, the Furiosois significantly more complex than the In-
namorato, largely because, in addition to the interweaving of narrative
strands and free standing episodes, Ariosto's interlace extends to include, as
integrally constitutive elements, a number of non-narrative structures, most
notably: 1) the authorial proems that invariably precede each canto and
comment on what has gone before and what comes after;162) the numerous
other authorial digressions and interventions so well discussed by Durling;
3) the major encomiastic and ekphrastic interludes in cantos 3, 26, 33, 42,
46;17 4) the principal allegorical episodes (ofAlcina's island - cantos 6-8,
10 - and the lunar surface - cantos 34-35), which participate in but also
gloss the surrounding narrativelines.18These features are either entirely ab-
sent from Boiardo's poem or not a continuous and integral part of it - in
particular,the use of proems for ethical, political, and/or social commentary
only emerges in the latter part of the Innamorato.At the same time, the in-
tertextual pattern of allusions to prior works in the Furioso is also more
complicated and more systematic than it is in Boiardo.19As we shall see,
Ariosto foregrounds verbal and thematic repetitions between all these inter-
laced elements, intratextual and intertextual alike, to challenge and even to
arrestthe forward movement of plot and character.
5Cf. Zatti, 1990, 10-11 and n.

)6Durling,132-50;Ascoli, 1987, 97-98.
17Seefor example,Hoffman 1992 and 1999.
18Ascoli, 1987, 123-24 and 264-65.
'9Thatis not to deny a significantintertextualdimensionto the Innamorato,however.
On this scoresee, for example,Cavallo,1993; Bruscagli,1995; Looney, 1996; Nohrnberg,
1998; Micocci;Gragnolati.
The result is that one can legitimately trace interpretive paths through
the poem in any of several ways: intratextually, by focusing on individual
characters,20or narrativeepisodes,21or images,22or themes;23intertextually,
by focusing on the poem's citations/transformationsof any one of severalma-
jor precursors;24historically and culturally,by focusing on Ariosto'sencomia
of his Estense patrons, his accounts of the Italianwars,25his variationson any
one of several cultural discourses (the "querelledes femmes" for example).26
Unfortunately, each structurally-sponsored shift in focus also drastically
shifts the interpretiveresults obtained, and the attempt to construct an inter-
pretive calculus that could account for all possibilities, reducing multiplicity
to unified significance, falters before the excessive number of signifying vari-
ables. Nonetheless, it is clear that isolating one structure or interpretivefocal
point to the exclusion of others obscures the essentially interlaced character
of the poem, which incessantly juxtaposes its constitutive elements with one
another and with the literarytexts and cultural discourses to which they refer
in a volatile game of ironic perspectives.At the same time, it is also clear that
the prominent historical-culture materials and their intricate positioning
with respect to literary narrative and themes are in some ways among the
most distinctively innovative aspects of Ariosto'stextual practice.
In this ceaseless play between one piece of writing and another, as be-
tween Ariosto's poem and the "social texts" that surround it, both the text/
context distinction and the literature/history opposition lose much of their
clarity. Within the Furioso,pieces of poem take turns as text and context for
one another, while the numerous historical-cultural contexts evoked by
Ariosto's text, literary and historical alike, both determine its meaning and
are recontextualized and reinterpreted by it. In short, neither a formalist,
textual, approach that strives to reduce the poem to a closed system of
self-generating significances or anti-significances, nor a historical, contex-
tual, analysis that attempts to find the work's meaning by submitting it to
the determinations of external formations (literary,political, generally cul-
tural, as may be), is sufficient to account for the Furioso'ssignifying practices.
In order to approximate the incessant dynamic of reciprocal appropriation
and ironization within the Furiosoand between the Furiosoand its external
20SeeWiggins.
21SeeDalla Palma.
22SeeGiamatti.
23SeeSaccone,1974.
24SeeJavitch,1984 and 1985.
25SeePampaloni;Murrin.
26See Durling;Shemek;Finucci;Benson;Ascoli, 1998.
interlocutors and circumstances, we should recognize that Ariosto's adapta-

tion of romance interlace has explicitly broadened beyond narrative and
theme to encompass both literary "intertextuality"and cultural "discursiv-
ity."27 In other words, Ariosto both allusively interweaves macro- and
micro-textual elements of the romance-epic tradition28and, far more explic-
itly, incorporates social and historical references and discourses within the
internal structures of his poem.
My second major point, then, is that the emergence of a new, complex
and dynamic mode of interlacein the Furiosois closely correlatedwith equally
striking shifts in semantic content with respect to the Innamorato. Zatti,
building on the work of Durling, has recently suggested that the primary in-
novations of Ariosto with respect to Boiardo are moments of poetic
self-reflexivity,particularlyat the points of suture and transition from one nar-
rativesegment to another.29He is, of course, right - a point my own work on
the multiple and contradictory figurations of poetry, poet, and reader in the
poem tends to support.3 On the other hand, I would like to stress here that
the Furiosois equally innovative in the way that it systematically introduces
historical and cultural materials that link the world of the poem to the cir-
cumstances of Estense Ferraraand of Italy in the throes of a dramatic crisis
motivated by the foreign interventions (beginning with that of Charles VIII
in 1494) and internecine violence (with particularattention to the role of the
papacy under Julius II [1503-1512] and then Leo X [1512-1521]).31
27Iuse "intertextuality"herein a specificallyliterary-historical

sense.My notion of"dis-
cursivity"derivesfrom the work of Michel Foucault,esp. TheArcheology ofKnowledge,with
an assistfromStephenGreenblatt'snotion of Shakespearean "negotiations"within socialdis-
courses. The phenomenon I am describingis relatedto what I have previously dubbed
"cotextuality" (Ascoli,1987, 45).
28Javitch, 1985, convincinglyshowshow Ariosto'simitativepracticetypicallyand delib-
eratelybrings together at least two earliervariantsof a given episode. Nohrnberg, 1976;
Quint, 1979; Parker;Ascoli, 1987; Zatti, 1990; Looney,1996;Javitch,1999 - among oth-
ers- discusshow, from the firstline forward,the poem intentionallyinterweavesromance
and epic elements.Cf. note 14 above
29
Zatti, 1990, esp. chap. 1.
30
Ascoli, 1987, 37-39 et passim.
31 On the
presenceof historicalmaterials,see Durling;Pampaloni;Bigi;Moretti, 1984;
Marsh;Baillet;Looney, 1990-1991; La Monica, 1992; Hoffman, 1992 and 1999; Murrin;
Biow; Henderson.In many ways, Carlo Dionisotti, 1961 and 1967, is the patronsaint of
contemporaryinterestin historicizingAriostoand his poem. Casadei,1988b, offersan excel-
lent review of the literatureto that date in his careful accounting of the additions and
revisionsof the materialbetween1516 and 1532. On the historicalcircumstancesin Ferrara
at the time of Ariosto, see Catalano;Bacchelli;Chiappini;Gundersheimer;Sestan;Beer;
Casadei,1988b; La Monica, 1992.
Although the two kinds of new materialmight seem to be antithetical-

the one pointing toward poetic ficticity, the other toward historical reality-
they are instead mutually conditioning and determining. The presenceof his-
torical materialspoints up, by contrast, the fictions of poetic narrative.32But
the more we notice the poem qua poem, the more we will consider the reality
of poetry itself as a historicallysituated mode of discourse. Furthermore,and
this point is crucial to my argument, both kinds of semantic novelties, poetic
and historical, are closely intertwined with the formal innovations of the
poem, since they make their appearances primarily in the proems, digres-
sions, and ekphrases. The last step to be taken, and my third major claim
here, is to suggest that the emergence of important new structuraland seman-
tic elements in the Furioso, brought together in Ariosto's expanded use of
traditional romance interlacetechniques, can be understood at least in part as
an effect of and/or a response to the pressureof historical crises.
II. EXAMPLES
To illustrate these three central points (the innovative structure and seman-
tics of the Furioso and their function as response to historical crisis), I will
focus on canto 17, which offers a particularlyinteresting example of interlac-
ing several different formal elements. Among these are two major narrative
segments (the tale of Rodomonte's devastating, Turnus-like foray into Paris
and the story of Grifone'sill-fated love for Orrigille and its unhappy denoue-
ment at the tournament of Norandino); the semi-autonomous episode of
Norandino, Lucina, and the Orco; a moralizing proem on the plight of Italy
subjected to tyrants and scourged by foreign invaders;and a digressiveautho-
rial apostrophe to the Christian European princes, concluding with
Giovanni de' Medici, that is, Pope Leo X.33 As the last two items suggest, this
is a canto with a strong topical, historical-political interest, in addition to a
complex narrativestructure.
Canto 17 is also, and very much to my purposes, one of the most
richly Boiardan of all the Furioso. The tournament of Norandino recalls
the tournament of the King of Cyprus at which he, Norandino, battled for
the love of Lucina (Orlando innamorato 2.19.52-55); the story of Grifone
and Orrigille continues a narrative begun in the earlier poem (2.3.62-65);
the story of the Orco gives both the prequel and the sequel to the Boiardan
story of Lucina chained, Andromeda-like, to a seaside cliff and rescued by
32Cf. Durling, 133-34; Bigi, 43.

33Quint, 1997, discussesthe questionof interlacein this canto and those aroundit in
termsdifferentfrom mine, thoughcomplementaryto them.
Gradasso and Mandricardo (3.3.24-60).34 Most intriguing, from the per-

spective of this study, is that while the narrative interlace of the stories of
the Orco, Lucina, and Norandino with those of Grifone and Orrigille, as
well as of the monstrous Orrilo, is already in place in the Innamorato,what
we do not find there are the topically historical interpolations, nor the fur-
ther juxtaposition of these tales with the siege of Paris. This last addition
also tends to "historicize" the material of romance by bringing it into con-
tact with an epic world (on the one hand the Carolingian "matter of
France,"and on the other, the Virgilian poetry of imperial Rome) that em-
braces the great sweep of military and political history.
Let me begin a specific illustration of the differences between the Furi-
oso and the Innamorato by juxtaposing two passages whose content is
analogous, but which, as we shall see, occupy very different positions struc-
turally in their respective poems, and consequently establish very different
relations to the historical world:
But while I sing, redeemerGod [Iddioredentore],I see all Italyon fire,be-
causetheseFrench- so valiant!- come to laywastewho knowswhat land,so
I will leavethis hopelesslove of simmeringFiordespina.Some other time, if
God permits,I'll tell you all thereis to this.35
The stanza is the very last of the Innamorato. The pathos of this passage
that signals the poem's premature end derives from the clear sense that his-
3Citationsof the Innamorato
areto the 1995 Bruscagliedition;Englishtranslationsof the
poemarefromthe 1989Rossedition.Ariosto,in fact,is bothborrowing andtransforming
multipleelements
fromBoiardo(cf.Rajna,266-88).Theamorous of thelovelyand
treachery
fraudulent remains
Orrigille the same,butwhere in the Boiardan
storyOrlando wasthebe-
trayedloverandGrifonetheobjectof Orrigille's
desire,nowGrifonehasbecomethevictim.
The way in whichAriosto'sGrifoneis madeby Orrigille'strickeryto assumethe disgracedar-
morof Martano andthusputhislifeatriskin factechoespreciselytheepisodethatintroduces
in theInnamorato
Orrigille (2.19,esp.17 and31).InBoiardo, Norandino is a participant
in a
tournament; in Ariosto,he is thehost(Rajna,281)- in bothGrifoneis present.SeeRoss,
1998,fora detailed
reading of theBoiardan AsfortheOrcoepisode,thefocalpointof
episode.
theBoiardan the
original, exposure of a naked
woman to thedangersof theseain looseimita-
tionofthemythofAndromeda inAriosto,
recurs butit isdisplaced
intotheepisodeofAngelica
exposedto a (feminine)Orcaand rescuedby RuggieroandOrlando.(Thatepisodeis, in turn,
doubledbytheadditionof theparallel
Olimpiaepisodein 1532.)Ariostotakesuphintsfrom
Boiardoto writetheantefactof Lucina's
dangerasa variation
on Odysseus'sencounterwith
Polyphemus:Boiardo'sOrcohasno eyes,as againstone (3.3.28), andhe throwsa mountainaf-
ter his tormentors/victims as they escapeby sea (55-58). See Rajna,282; cf. Baldan.Micocci,
48-54, demonstratesthat Boiardoalreadyhad the Homericmodelclearlyin mind.
35"Mentreche io canto, o Iddio redentore,/ vedo la Italiatutta a fiama e a foco / per
questi Galli, che con granvalore/ vengon per disertarnon so che loco; / perbvi lascio in
questovano amore/ de Fiordespinaardentea poco a poco;/ un'altrafiata,se mi fia concesso
/ racontaroviil tutto per espresso"(3.9.26).
torical events - the opening of the so-called "Italian crisis" with the
invasion of the peninsula by the French King, Charles VIII, in 1494 -
have overtaken Boiardo and his poem in ways he did not anticipate and
which he clearly found unbearable. Such events have no coherent relation
with the world of the poem, from which they have, until this decisive
point of rupture, largely been excluded.36 That is not to say that the In-
namoratodoes not have a cultural role and hence a fundamentally political,
or at least ideological, meaning, but rather that that role and that meaning
reflect the relative stability and compactness of Ferrareseand Italian cul-
ture in the later Quattrocento.37
Consider by contrast the proem of Furioso,canto 17:
When our sins havepassedbeyondthe limits of remission,God the just of-
ten gives reign to atrocioustyrantsand to monsters- endowingthem with
the forceand the wit to do evil - in orderto show that his justiceis equalto
his mercy.38
A lengthy list of classical tyrants is then presented, followed by the observa-
tion that God also punished late-antique Italy in this way, but with
barbarian invaders rather than with home-grown monsters, invaders who
"made the earth fat with blood - [thus God] gave Italy in distant days in
prey to the Huns and Lombards and Goths" (2.6-8). Finally, the poet ob-
serves that the situation has not changed much in his own day, when the
Italian peninsula is afflicted both by tyrants and by foreigners:
Of this we havenot only in ancienttimesbut in our own clearproof,when to
us, uselessand ill-bornflocks,he givesas guardiansenragedwolves:
to whom it seemsthat theirhungeris not greatenough nor theirbelliescapa-
ciousenoughfor suchmeat- andso theycallwolveswith evenmoreravenous
appetitesfrombeyondthe mountainsto devourus....
Now God permitsthat we should be punishedby peoplesperhapsworse

thanourselveson accountof our multiple,endless,nefarious,damnableerrors.
36Cf.Bigi, 26 and 40; Casadei,1988b, 9-10.

370n the culturalpoliticsof Boiardo'smilieu, see Bertoni;Chiappini;Gundersheimer;
Bruscagli,1983 and 1995; Tuohy;Campbell;Rambaldi;Cranston.
38"I1giusto Dio, quandoi peccatinostri/ hanno di remissionpassatoil segno, / acci6
che la giustiziasuadimostri/ ugualeallapieta,spessoda regno/ a tiranniatrocissimiet a mo-
strie da lor forzae di mal fareingegno"(1.1-6). Unlessotherwiseindicated,citationsof the
Furiosoareto the thirdeditionof 1532 (Ariosto1982). Translations of the Furiosoand other
Ariostanwritingsaremy own.
A timewill comewhen to despoiltheirshoreswewill go, if everwe becomebet-

ter and if theirsins should reachthose limitswhich move the eternalGood to
wrath.(Emphasisadded)39
Though more obvious literaryprecursorsthan Boiardo for these lines are Pe-
trarch and Dante,40 Ariosto does clearly refer to the series of devastating
historical events, the Italian wars, set in motion by Charles'sinvasion, which
by his time had far exceeded in horror anything Boiardo could have imag-
ined twenty years earlier. Again like Boiardo, he invokes divine causality
("Iddio redentore" matched by "IIgiusto Dio") to explain and, perhaps, to
remedy those events.
Despite the similarities in content, however, what are most striking are
the very different formal positions that this material has in the two poems.
The terminal outburst of Boiardo has only one precedent in the Innamorato,
which also comes at the end of a large textual unit and presents itself as a for-
mal rupture (2.31.49).41 By contrast, a relatively large number of Ariostan
proems treat analogous topics, usually linking them very cosely to the spe-
cific circumstances of Ferraraand the Este (e.g., 14.1-10; 15.1-2; 34.1-3).
In short, Ariosto introduces structuralmeans for representingwithin his
poem - in continuity with its fictions - the historical violence that threat-
ens him, his city, his patrons. Such means are, by contrast, virtually absent
from the Innamorato. In the particular case under consideration, the poet's
39"Diquesto abbiannon pur al tempo antiquo;/ ma ancoraal nostro, chiaro esperi-
mento, / quandoa noi, greggiinutilie mal nati,/ ha datoperguardianlupi arrabbiati: // a cui
non parch'abbia bastarlor fame,/ ch'abbiil lor ventrea capirtantacame;/ e chiamanlupi di
pii ingordebrame/ da boschioltramontania divorarne... ./ Or Dio consenteche noi sian
puniti / da populi da noi forsepeggiori,/ perli multiplicatiet infiniti/ nostrinefandi,obbro-
briosierrori./ Tempoverrach'adepredarlor liti / andremonoi, se mai sarenmigliori,/ e che
i peccatilor giunganoal segno,/ che l'eternaBontamuovanoa sdegno"(3.5-8; 4.1-4; 5.1-8).
40Forexample:Petrarch,RimeSparse,canzone 128, "Italiamia, benche il parlarsia in-
darno"(see esp. lines 39-41: "Ordentro a una gabbia/ fiere selvaggeet mansuetegregge/
s'annidansl che sempreil migliorgeme,"as well as the iteratedmotif of foreigninvasionmet
by the inepitudeof Italianprinces);and Dante,Paradiso27 (seeesp. lines 55-59: "Investe di
pastorlupi rapaci/ si veggiondi qua su pertutti i paschi:/ o difesadi Dio, perchepur giaci?
/ Del sanguenostroCaorsinie Guaschi/ s'apparecchian di bere." BehindDante, of course,is
Christ'sindictmentin the Sermonon the Mount of falseprophetsas "wolvesin sheep'sdoth-
ing" (Matthew 7:15; cf. Jeremiah23:1). The relevanceof the anti-clericalstrain in these
precursortextswill becomeapparentas we proceed.
41Thisis the penultimatestanzaof book 2 and apparentlyrefersto the warwith Venice
in 1482. The firstedition of the poem was publishedin 1482 or 1483 (cf. Ross, 1989, 14),
andthe thirdbookwasnot addeduntil significantlylaterandwasonly publishedafterthe au-
thor'sdeath.In any case,this earlierinterruptionof poetic narrativeby militarycrisissimply
confirmsBoiardo'sreluctanceto textualizehistoricalviolence.On the importanceof the Ve-
netianmaterialsforAriosto,see Sestan;Casadei,1988b; and Looney,1990-1991.
reflections on his own time grow out of the characterRodomonte's destruc-

tive rampage inside the walls of Carolingian Paris.Along with the adoption
of a formal mechanism to facilitate the textualization of violent historical
events goes an "intertextual"recourseto literarytopoi and to specific textual
models for representingsuch material.The phenomenon of internal tyranny
and external invasion is made familiarby placing it in a sequence of historical
examples well known from much humanist literature;the attempt to explain
God's apparently incomprehensible toleration of evil as a "divine scourge" is
equally commonplace. More specifically, as just noted, the plea for divine
mercy on behalf of ravagedItaly goes back to Petrarch's"Italiamia, benche il
parlarsia indarno" (Rime Sparse128), the canzone also cited by Machiavelli
at the end of the Principein exhortation of the Medici princes (chapter 26).
We will soon see that the subsequent apostrophe to Leo X and company
blends elements from two Petrarchancanzoni and his Trionfodellafama, as
well as invoking a complex network of Dantean intertexts.
The degree to which the proem draws upon prior textual sources in the
representation of historical material already suggests that Ariosto's confron-
tation with history is heavily mediated and qualified, in a way that buffers
him and his poem from the shock of direct, violent encounter that resonates
in the last stanza of the Innamorato.In the proem alone we find indications
of a strong parodic motive, characteristicof what Pocock has called the Ma-
chiavellian moment, that undercuts the theological politics of both Dante
and Petrarch. Rather than imagining a divinely inspired political redeemer
who will restore Italy to virtue and political stability, Ariosto simply foresees
a day when Italianswill get to take their historical turn as vicious scourges to
the foreign peoples who now devastate the Italic peninsula - violence be-
gets reciprocal violence in an endless spiral of unredeemable devastation, in
a vision far more cynical than Machiavelli's.42
I now want to suggest how this complex process of acknowledging, tex-
tualizing, and ironizing historical-political crisis is subsequently played out
in the interlaced structure of the canto, thus subordinating the movement of
Ariostan narrativeto an allusive political critique that gives specific shape -
as it were, a local habitation and a name - to what the proem to canto 17
states in the most general terms. Already the transition from narrativestrand
to narrativestrand is suggestive. At stanza 17, the narratorsays that he wants
to exchange the rage and death of the pagan Christian battles for something
more pleasant, a tale set in the Edenic city-garden of Damascus, which at
first seems to be the anti-type of besieged Paris:
42Thisis not the only historicalproemwith a subversiveagenda.A suggestiveexample,

as Durling (140-44) noted some time ago, is the proemto canto 14 (stanzas1-10).
ForGod'ssake,my Lord,let us ceaseto speakof wrathand to sing of death

... becausethe time has come to returnto whereI left Grifone,havingarrived
at the gatesof Damascuswith Orrigilleand ... her lover [Martano].
Damascusis said to be amongthe richestcities of the Levant,and among
the mostpopulousandmostornate.SevendaysdistancefromJerusalemit lies,in
a fruitfuland abundantplane,no lessjocundin the winterthan in the summer.
Throughthe citytwo crystallineriversrun,wateringan infinitenumberof

gardens,which neverlackeitherflowersor fronds.43
Before we know it, however, Grifone and company are listening to the
story-within-the-story of the Orco'ssavagecannibalism. Shortly thereafterthe
festive tournament of Norandino dissolves into a slaughtervirtually indistin-
guishable from that taking place inside Paris,44 when the Syrian king
mistakenly attempts to punish Grifone for the pusillanimous behavior of the
treacherous Martano (Orrigille'slatest lover, whom she has passed off as her
brother to her feckless suitor), who had recently disgraced himself in
Damascus while disguised in armor stolen from Grifone (17.116.8). Already
at the end of canto 16 the Ariostan narratorhad focused the reader'sattention
on the paradoxicalprocess by which the representationof inhuman destruc-
tion gives rise to the pleasures of poetic verse: "He hears the din, views the
horrible signs of cruelty, the human members scattered. No more now-
come back another time, you who gladly listen to this lovely tale [istoria]."45
In fact, the "bellaistoria"- which in the proem to canto 17 comes to mean
both story and history - does not depart for long from a violence that overtly
mimics the invasivenessof foreign armies mixed with the failureof leadership
that we have just been told characterizesthe contemporary Italian scene.
The structuralcrux of canto 17, however, is the placement of the episode
of Norandino, Lucina, and the Orco between the proem and the narrator's
long digression on the evils of warfareamong Christians that has led to Italy's
present subjection. In this tale, Ariosto elaborates on his Boiardan intertext
to create a knowing conflation of the Homeric Polyphemus with Jack-and-
43 "Malasciam,
per Dio, Signore,ormai/ di parlard'irae di cantardi morte;/ ... / che
tempoe ritornardov'iolasciai/ Grifon,giuntoa Damascoin su le porte/ con Orrigilleperfida,
e con quello/ ch'adulterera,e non di lei fratello.// De le piu riccheterredi Levante,/ de le piu
popolosee meglio ornate/ si dice esserDamasco,che distante/ siede a Ierusalemsette gior-
nate,/ in un pianofruttiferoe abondante,/ non men giocondoil verno,che l'estate... // Per
la cittl duo fiumicristallini/ vannoinaffiandoperdiversirivi/ un numeroinfinitodi giardini,
/ non mai di fior,non mai di frondeprivi.. ." (17.1-2, 5-8; 18.1-6; 19.1-4).
4Pampaloni,644-49; La Monica, 1985, 330-31.
45"Odeil rumor,vede gli orribilsegni / di crudelta,l'umanemembrasparte./ Ora non
piu: ritorniun'altravolta / chi voluntierla bellaistoriaascolta"(89.5-8).
the-Beanstalk and the pastoral tradition.46The ostensible purposes of the

story are, at one level, to justify the celebratorytournament of Norandino by
recounting how he and Lucina were finally reunited and, at another, to com-
plete one more of Boiardo's unfinished narratives as part of the project of
continuing and bringing to closure the Innamorato. But the episode has a
thoroughly overdetermined place in the Furiososeconomy of interlace, bear-
ing significant relationship to severaldifferent narrativeand thematic strands
of the poem. For instance, it clearly constitutes a diptych with the earlierep-
isode of the monstrous female Orca devouring a series of naked female
victims tied to a cliff. Furthermore, by making the Orco a shepherd who
plays pastoral ditties on his "sambuca,"or "zampogna,"Ariosto locates him
in a long line of peculiar poet-figures who traversethe poem.47
What I will highlight now, however, is the calculating way that the ep-
isode echoes the political imagery of the proem and also anticipates the
later authorial digression, forming a kind of fictional bridge between the
two moments when contemporary history intrudes into the canto. The
Orco as "blind monster [mostro cieco]" (33) recalls the "atrocious tyrants
and ... monsters" (1) to whom God periodically gives reign. Moreover,
since this monster is also a shepherd, a "pastor"(32.8, 34.6, 47.8, 54.6), he
enters into the metaphorics of pastoral care that were used to characterize
the failed leadership of contemporary Italy (3.5-8). In other words, the po-
litical violence which Ariosto sees ravaging the historical world, and which
he repeatedly describes as a cannibalistic devouring of human flesh and
blood (2, 4), is surprisingly echoed by the Orco who feasts on the flesh of
Norandino's men (35).
The political significance of the Orco'scannibalism is given furtherstress
by verbal echo from one of Dante's most terrifying depictions of the spiri-
a
tual consequences of the civil wars ravaging the Italian peninsula and the
individual cities within it in his own day: the vision of the deposed Pisan
leader,Count Ugolino, gnawing away at the skull of his arch-enemy Ruggieri,
Archbishop of Pisa, in Infernocantos 32 and 33. Emilio Bigi, in his excellent
commentary on the Furioso,notes that the verse which describes Norandino
returning to the cave to be near the hapless Lucina after his own Odys-
seus-like escape is a transformationof a famous line which hints that Ugolino
may have devoured his own children: Ariosto's "pote la pieta piu che '1
timore" (devotion did more than fear;48.5) clearlyechoes Dante's "piuche '1
dolor, pote il digiuno" (hunger did more than sorrow;Inferno33.75). Taken
together with the proem, these echoes could be said to constitute nothing
46Rajna,282-84; Baldan,29 et passim;Micocci,48-54.

4717.35.8and 17.47.5-8. Cf. Ascoli, 1987, 392 and n. 228.
more than a lingering memory of historicalviolence in the poem, with the ad-
ditional, and non-trivial, irony that the Orco, whose solicitousness toward his
flock is what permits Norandino's escape, and who "mai femina ... non di-
vora" (never eats women; 40.8), is considerably more discriminating and
civilized than the monsters and "enragedwolves" running amok in Italy.That
the episode has a more precise, and scandalous, political meaning, however,
becomes apparent in the next formal segment of the canto.
As the narratorcoses this episode and turns back to Norandino reestab-
lished in Damascus, he almost immediately enters into a lengthy topical
digression, occasioned by the observation that the Syrian Moslems were
armed like the European Christians:
The Syriansin those dayshad the customof armingthemselvesin the fash-
ion of the West. Perhapstheywereled to it by the continuousproximityof the
French,who then ruledthe holy placewhereomnipotentGod livedin the flesh
- andwhich now the proudand miserableChristians,to theireverlastingdis-
credit,leavein the handsof [pagan]dogs.48
This indictment then gives way to a tirade against internecine Christian
conflicts and particularly the wars, led by the Spanish and French, which
have subjugated and humiliated Italy:
If you want to be called "MostChristian"and you others"MostCatholic,"
why do you kill the men of Christ?why arethey despoiledof theirgoods?Why
do you not takebackJerusalem,which was takenfromyou by renegades?
Are you, Spain,not nearto Africa,which has offendedyou farmore than

this Italy?And yet, to increasethe poorwretch'stravail,you abandonyourfirst,
so lovely,enterprise.O stinkingbilge, full of everyvice, you sleep,drunkardIt-
aly - and does it not weigh on you that, once servedby this people and by
that, you arenow theirhandmaiden?49
48"Sorianiin queltempoaveanousanza/ d'armarsi a questaguisadi Ponente./ Forseve

gli induceala vicinanza/ chede'Franceschi avean continuamente, / chequiviallorreggean la
sacrastanza/ dovein carneabitbDio onnipotente; / ch'orai superbie misericristiani,/ con
biasimilor,lascianin mande'cani"(17.73.1-8).
Cristianissimi
49"Se esservoivolete,/ e voi altriCatolicinomati,/ perchedi Cristogli
uominiuccidete? / perchede'benilorson dispogliati? /PercheIerusalem non riavete/ che
toltoe statoa voi darinegati?...// Non haitu, Spagna,l'Africa vicina,/ chet'haviapiudi
questaItaliaoffesa?/ E pur,perdartravaglio allameschina,/ lascila primatuasl bellaim-
presa./ O d'ogniviziofetidasentina,/ dormi,Italiaimbriaca, e nonti pesa/ ch'oradi questa
gente,oradi quella/ chegiaservati fu, seifattaancella?" (75.1-6;76.1-8).
This attack on the internecine warfareof European Christians, with its call
for a reconciling Crusade against the pagan Other, has, again, an obvious Pe-
trarchan precedent, and perhaps a Dantean intertext as well.50
The digression culminates in an apostrophe, both monitory and horta-
tory, to Pope Leo X, during whose papacy both the first (1516) and second
(1521) editions of the Furiosoappeared, and whose imprimatur authorized
its publication.51 The narrator addresses Leo as the one leader who could
both protect the Italian peninsula against her neighbors and, presumably,re-
direct European energies into a new Crusade:
You,greatLeo [granLeone=Lion],on whom pressesthe heavyburdenof the
keys to heaven- do not allow Italyto be swallowedup in sleep, if you have
your handsin her hair.YouareShepherd;and God has givenyou that staffto
carryand haschosenthatfiercename,so thatyou mightroar,andraiseup your
arms,in orderto defendyour flockfromwolves.52
50Thelast two lines of stanza73, and first four of stanza75, clearlyderivefrom Pe-
trarch'sTrionfodellaFama,2.137-44: "poiveniasolo il buon duceGoffrido/ che fe' l'impresa
santae' passigiusti./ Questo (di ch'iomi sdegnoe indarnogrido)/ fecein Jerusalemcolle sue
mani / il mal guardatoe gia neglettonido; / gite superbi,o miseriCristiani,/ consumando
l'un l'altro,e non vi caglia/ che '1sepolcrodi Cristoe in man dei cani."Note especiallythe
cannabalisticmotif in the Petrarchan original("consumando l'un l'altro")thatsuggestsan as-
sociative link to the Orco episode. The passage, incidentally, may well have been an
inspirationfor Tasso'smagnumopus,Gerusalemme liberata.Also relevant,however,arethese
lines spokenby the falsecounselor,Guido da Montefeltro,in Dante'sInferno27.85-90: "Lo
principed'i novi Farisei,/ avendopresoguerrapressoa Laterano,/ e non con Saracinne con
Giudei, / che ciascunsuo nemico eracristiano/ e nessunerastato a vincerAcri / ne merca-
tante in terradi Soldano."The Danteanconnection becomesmore evidentwhen Ariosto
bringsthe papacyinto the pictureat stanza79, and with it additionalechoesof the Comme-
dia. See also note 40 above.
51Leo'slicenseto
publishis givenin a prefatoryletterto the 1516 editionsignedby the
humanistJacopoSadoletoand dated27 March1516. That letterin turnwasbasedon a ver-
sion draftedby Ariosto'sfriend Pietro Bembo, dated 20 June 1515. The license was then
renewedin 1521. The licensesaredescribedin Agnelli and Ravegnani,1:17-21. Catalano
givesthe background(1: 428) and reprintsBembo'sletter (document256, in 2: 149-50). I
am indebtedto Dennis Looneyfor bringingthis informationto my attentionandfor a num-
ber of otherusefulsuggestionsthat havemadea significantimpacton this essay.
52"Tu,granLeone,a cui premonle terga/ de le chiavidel ciel le gravisome,/ non lasciar
che nel sonno si sommerga/ Italia,se la man l'haine le chiome. / Tu sei Pastore;e Dio t'ha
quellaverga/ dataa portare,e sceltoil fieronome, / perchetu ruggi,e che le bracciastenda,/
sl che dai lupi il greggetuo difenda"(79.1-8).Thereis anotherPetrarchan echohere,this time
fromRimeSparse53.10-14, 19-23:"Ches'aspettinon so, ne che s'agogni/ Italia,che suoi guai
non parche senta,/ vecchiaoziosae lenta;/ dormirasempreet non fia chi la svegli?/ Le man
l'avess'ioavoltoentro'capegli/... / ma non senzadestinoa le tue braccia/ che scuoterforte
et sollevarla ponno / e or commessonostrocapoRoma./ Ponman in quellavenerabilchioma
/ securamente,et ne le treccesparte,sl che la neghittosaescadal fango."As we shallsee, how-
Leo is explicitly treated as a potential force for good, a pastoral protector of

sheep from ravening beasts, a presumed antidote to the "enraged wolves"
who now guard the "uselessand ill-born flocks" of Italy. Curiously, however,
this apostrophe is immediately preceded by a reference to the Donation of
Constantine, the spurious document by which the Emperor Constantine had
allegedly ceded political jurisdiction over the Western Empire to the bishop
of Rome (78.3-4). The point explicitly made is that the Germans and other
ravagersof Italy should seek Roman wealth in the East, where Constantine
moved it at the transferof imperialwealth from Rome to the EasternEmpire.
Nonetheless, we can hardly miss the allusive reference to the long-standing
critique of the papal usurpation and abuse of secularauthority,which was de-
veloped by Dante (especially Inferno 19.90-117 and 27.85-111; Paradiso
27.40-66), Petrarch(Libersine nomine), Valla (Defalsa et ementita donatione
Constantini), and even Ariosto, elsewhere in the Furioso(34.80). Such a cri-
tique, it need hardly be said, was now more pressing than ever, in the
immediate aftermath of Alexander VI's nepotistic imperialism (1492-1503)
and Julius II's adventurism, and on the eve of the Lutheran Reform.
What we may also notice, simply from reading through the passage just
cited, is that it contains a subterranean yet distinctive thematic, and even
verbal, connection to the Orco episode with which it is so closely juxta-
posed by the magic of Ariostan interlace. That juxtaposition brings with it
an irony that reverses the basically hopeful thrust of the passage, turning
Leo from potential solution into part of the problem delineated both in the
digression and in the proem before it: "You are Shepherd; and God has
given you that staff to carry and has chosen that fierce name." Like the
Orco, Leo is a shepherd with a capacity for bestial ferocity. In retrospect,
the reference to the Pope's role as keeper of the "keys of heaven" connects
with the pastoral Orco who "opened and closed [aprivae tenea chiuso]" the
sheepfold (34.7). Both images derive from the passage in Matthew in which
Jesus was traditionally said to have conferred papal powers on Peter: "thou
art Peter and upon this rock I will build my church. And the gates of Hell
will not prevail against it. And I will give thee the keys of... heaven. And
whatsoever thou shalt bind upon earth, it shall be bound also in heaven:
and whatsoever thou shalt loose on the earth, it shall be loosed also in
heaven" (16: 18-19). The two principal tropes of the passage (of the keys
and of loosing and binding) were often conflated in a composite figure of
locking and opening, as in this passage from Dante's Purgatorio(the speaker
ever,Dante is a far strongerpresence- note the echoes of the passagescited previouslyin

notes 40 and 50 above,both of which specificallylink Italy'spredicamentto the failuresof
the papacy,as the Petrarchdoes not, at leastin the two canzoniechoedby Ariosto.
is an angel): "I hold these [two keys] from Peter,who told me that I should
err rather in opening [the gate] than in keeping it locked."53Even more to
our point, the passage was regularly invoked to suggest the abuse by popes
of their sacred office, particularly for purposes of simonistic profiteering
(e.g., Inferno 19.97-105) and, notably, of waging war against fellow Chris-
tians: "It was not our intention that on the right hand of our successor a
part of the Christian people should sit, while the others sit on the other
side, nor that the keys which were given to me should become the device on
a battle-standard raised against baptized souls."54
All of these potentially subversive elements were in place in the first,
1516, edition of the Furioso,when what we are calling canto 17 was in fact
canto 15. For the 1521 edition, Ariosto made a small but crucial revision to
his text, which brought out the full force of the equation between the Orco
and the Pope. To the first allusive reference linking the Orco to Dante's
Ugolino and Ruggieri, he added a second (not noted by Bigi) in the preced-
ing stanza. In 1516, stanza 47, line 8, reads:"the horrible shepherd [orribile
pastor] who follows behind them" (1960, 508). In 1521 it has become: "the
fierce shepherd [fier pastor] who came along behind them." The phrase "fier
pastor" recalls Ugolino's first, explicitly cannibalistic, appearance:"la bocca
sollevb dal fiero pasto" (he raised his mouth from the fierce meal; Inferno
33.1; emphasis added). The change renders plain the thematic connection
that motivated the original allusion by restoring the motif of bestial hunger
excised in the shift from Dante's "piu che '1dolor, pote il digiuno" to Ario-
sto's "pote la pieta piu che '1 timore." The shift from "pasto" to "pastor"
brings with it a calculated comic irony, at once focussing attention on the
Orco's cannibalism and on the fact that the monster actually is - as far as
his sheep are concerned - a "good shepherd."
The force of the added phrase, however, is not confined to its signifi-
cance within the confines of the Orco episode proper: it has a broader
intratextual resonance as well, one which will become obvious if we consider
again the apostrophe to Leo: "You are Shepherd [Tu sei Pastore]; and God
has given you that staff to carry and has chosen that fierce name [fiero
nome], so that you might roar [perche tu ruggi], and raise up your arms, in
order to defend your flock from wolves." Separated by a single line we find
the two constituent elements of the Orcan epithet, "fierpastor [fierce shep-
53""Da Pierle tegno;e dissemich'i'erri/ anzi ad aprirch'atenerlaserrata"(9.127-28).

54"Nonfu nostraintenzionech'adestramano/ d'i nostrisuccessoripartesedesse,/ parte
dal'altradel popol cristiano;/ ne che le chiaviche mi fuorconcesse,/ divenissersignaculoin
vessillo/ che contrabattezzaticombattesse"(Paradiso27.46-51; cf. Inferno27.100-5).
herd]."5 The furtherelement of a roaring("perchetu ruggi"[so that you

may roar;79.7]) may evoke Dante'streacherousecclesiastic,Ruggieri-
now castas Leo'sspiritualancestor.56 The Popewith an animal'snameis thus
grotesquelymetamorphosed into an alter-egoof the monstrousOrco. In his
case,however,the ironyof the allusionis single and devastating:wherethe
Orco is both shepherd("pastor") andcannibal("pasto"),Leo, it would seem,
is a "pastor"turnedcannibal,a raveningwolf in shepherd'sclothing.
This procedureof ironic qualificationthroughAriosto'samplified,his-
toricizingadaptationof romanceinterlaceis then comicallyconfirmedlater
in the canto when, in the narrativeof Norandino'sdisastrouserror,Orrig-
ille'slover,Martano,encasedin the armorfrom Grifone,is describedfrom
the first edition on as "hewho put on a pelt not his own, like the jackass
once did that of the lion."57The imagenot only takesus backto Norandino
and companyescapingfrom the Orco, la Homer,wrappedin goat skins
("il non suo cuoio")and slatheredin ovine grease,but also, evidently,con-
juresthe leonine, that is asinine,Leo as well.58
Dante'snightmare-made-real of eucharisticcommunityturnedto canni-
balistic, neo-Theban civil in
war, Pisa, Florence,and the Italianpeninsula
generally,is characteristically focusedin the Commediaon the strugglebe-
tweenGuelfandGhibelline,ecclesiastical andsecularpowers,as it clearlyis in
Inferno 27, 32, and 33. It is indeed out of this traditionthat both the proem
andthe Ariostandigressionof canto 17 emerge,with the additionalpathosof
their prescientprolepsisof the conflicts betweenthe Catholic churchand
Protestantsects.The fantasticnarrativeof the Furioso,as filteredthroughthe
complexevolutionsof Ariostaninterlace,thus becomethe vehicleof an indi-
55The descriptionof Leo in these termswas presentfrom the first edition, raisingthe
questionof whetherAriostowas alreadyat that stageobliquelyechoing,consciouslyor not,
Inferno33.1. The question,of course,cannot be answereddefinitively.But the insertionof
the locution "fierpastor"in 1521, with its evidentconnectionboth to the Danteanecho in
stanza48 and to the descriptionof Leo in stanza79, surelymeansthat by 1521 the poet had
recognizednot only the possibleallusion,but its full, violentlyanti-papal,implications.
56
In an earliermartialproem,Ariostospeaksof Ippolito'sdefeatof anotherroaringlion,
Venice:"quandoal Leone,in martanto feroce/ ... / facestesl, ch'ancorruggierl'oda"(15.2;
emphasisadded).As is often noted, the papacyand the Venetianswerethe primarythreatsto
Ferrarese securityin both Ariosto'stime and Boiardo's,the two joining forcesat the battleof
Ravenna.See note 41 above.
57"Coluich'indossoil non suo cuoio, / come l'asinogia quel del leone"(1.1-2; emphasis
added).
5The laterepisodeis dottedwith imagesthat reinforcea connectionto the earlierpart
of the canto - for example,Martanois twice linkedwith "lupi"(88.8; 91.3), while two of
the "extras"in the tournamenthave names pointedly derivedfrom the pastoraltradition:
"Tirsee Corimbo"(96.3).
rect, sheltered commentary not only on the general political crisis of the day,
but also on the specific complicity of the papacy in that crisis.Along with the
public crises in Italy and Ferrara,of course, these passagesmay reflect a mo-
tive of personal revenge against the Pope, from whom Ariosto had expected
but not received patronage, a point to which I will return shortly.59
In political and military terms, Leo could become for Ariosto, and his Es-
tense masters, a convenient focal point for a collection of problems in which
he was complicitous, even though he could rarelybe given exclusive blame for
them. In the years leading from 1494 to the publication of the first Furiosoin
1516 the paradeof foreign intruders- French, Spanish, and imperial- had
continued unabated. The years of Julius II's papacy had been especially dan-
gerous for Ferrara.The Estense state was set precariously near the point of
encounter between the shifting macro-forcesof France, Spain, the Emperor,
Venice, Milan, and the papacy,and its territorieswere divided between those
with traditional feudal attachments to the papacy (Ferraraitself and to the
Empire (Reggio and Modena). This season of the Italian wars culminated in
the bloody battle of Ravenna in 1512, which pitted France and Ferrara
against Julius, the Venetians, and the Spanish and which, despite victory, left
the Estense shaken.60In addition, Julius had been responsible for depriving
the Este of two of their most cherished territorial holdings, Reggio and
Modena, in 1510, and had repeatedlythreatened to depose them from their
rule over the papal fiefdom of Ferrara,as he had earlierdone to the Montefel-
tro in Urbino. In the years leading up to 1516, the memory of these losses
and threats, with which Giovanni de' Medici had been associated as papal
legate in Bologna during the last years of Julius'sreign, were still fresh. They
were made more vivid still by Leo'sbad faith in failing to restoreModena and
Reggio to Este control despite promises to do so. The Medici Pope'sown di-
rect attempts to unseat the Este would not come until 1519.61It may well be
that the outbreak of open hostilities at that point at least partly accounts for
the insertion of the key locution "fierpastor"in the 1521 edition.
5CatalanodiscussesAriosto'srelationshipwith Leo at length(vol. 1, esp.pages352-87)

and givesparticularprominenceto the Pope'sfailureto providepatronage(354-57, 385-87,
476). Ariosto discusseshis disappointmentin Satire3, esp. lines 82-105, 151-206, and 7
lines 55-69 and 88-114, while Satire2, esp.lines 1-9, 58-96, 196-234, andSatire4, esp.lines
79-102, contain anti-clericaland anti-Mediceandiatribes.See also note 64 below.On Ari-
osto'sattitudetowardthe clergyin general,see Dionisotti, 1967; and Mayer.
60Ariostomakes repeatedreferenceto this battle, notably in the proem to canto 15
(1-10), as well as at 3.55 and 33.40-41. The battleand its effectson the peninsulaas a whole
arememorablyrecountedby FrancescoGuicciardiniin books 10 and 11 of the Storiad'Italia.
61For the impactof the Modena/Reggioquestionon Ariosto'srelationshipto Leo, see
Catalano,vol. 1, pages387, 478, 490, 501, 533-34.
Though the proem and digression avoid local Ferrarese and Estense
concerns (which are taken up elsewhere, at a safe remove from references to
Leo), they certainly constitute an overt recognition that what for Boiardo
had appeared to be an apocalyptic disruption of social and political nor-
malcy in the Italian peninsula, for Ariosto and his generation had itself
become the norm, a fact that Ariosto is able to confront in representable,
and hence tolerable, form within the body of his text, as his predecessor ap-
parently could not.62 But Ariosto's politically charged use of interlace takes
the poem's relation to its historical circumstances a step further - allowing
a corrosive, structurally determined irony to play over the poet's apparently
pious celebration of patrons and potentates, creating at least the illusion that
the poem afforded a refuge and a point of vantage from which history could
be viewed, interpreted, and contingently mastered. At the same time, the
very evasiveness and indirectness of Ariosto's political critique - which he
willingly offers under cover of its opposite, namely a courtly encomium of
those most to blame for Italy'sills - suggests just how precarious, ineffica-
cious, and fundamentally illusory such mastery really is.
This point might be less compelling if the viciously ironic textualiza-
tion of Leo X through his symbolic name in canto 17 should somehow
prove to be an isolated incident in both the Furioso and the period as a
whole. It is clearly not, however. Charles Stinger, among others, has shown
the positive typological-symbolic valences that were attached to papal
names in official documents and through public displays of the iconogra-
phy of power.63In the Satires,Ariosto explicitly vents his feelings about Leo
and the Church in terms close to those of canto 17, though far more ex-
plicit,64 and in the Furioso itself the ekphrastic allegory of Avarice and
Liberality in canto 26 clearly draws on the motifs of canto 17 to turn an ap-
parent encomium of Leo into another allusive, structurally implied,
indictment, directed specifically against the decidedly illiberal Pope, who
62Cf.Durling, 134.
63Stinger,91-92. Machiavelli'sfox-lion symbolismderivedfrom Dante and Cicero in
ThePrince,chapter18, also concealsa veiled and highly ambivalentreferenceto Leo, from
whom he, too, vainlysoughtliberatingpatronage(Ascoli,1993, esp. 242-45). Ariostowould
later pick up the Machiavellianimage in attacking the tyrannicalrule of Leo'snephew,
Lorenzo,Duke of Urbino,the dedicateeof ThePrince(Satire4.94-102, cf. 7-12). For addi-
tional discussionof Ariostoand Machiavelli,see Ascoli,2000b.
64Satire2 indictsall prelates,frompriestto pope, of ambitionand avarice,simony and
nepotism. Lines 205 and following depict a genericpope who will "triumph,filthy with
Christianblood"(222) and is preparedto "giveItalyin preyto Franceor Spain"(223) recall-
failed to provide the poet Ariosto with patronage at a time when he desper-
ately felt the need for it.65
The issue of patronage brings us to the crucial point that Leo is not the
only historical figure textualized in this way, nor likely the most important
from Ariosto's perspective. Leo's patronage had seemed especially crucial to
Ariosto in 1513 because his patron of record at that time was Cardinal Ip-
polito d'Este, in whose service he remained until the Cardinal's departure
for Hungary in 1517. Ippolito is the man to whom the Furiosois ostensibly
addressed and the object of its most fulsome and central encomia, most no-
tably in cantos 3 and 46. However, Ippolito's failings as a patron, and in
particular his inability to appreciate or adequately rewardAriosto's artistic
talents are the explicit subject of Satire 1 and of at least one embittered let-
ter,66as well as of biographical legend. In AriostosBitter Harmony,I argued
that Ariosto's treatment of Ippolito is subject to systematic subversion
ing Furioso17.3-5, 73-79. Forpastoralmetaphoricslinkedto Leo in one way or another,see

3.115-12; 4.7-12. Forcomparableanimalimagery,see 2.2-3; 5.25; 7.49-54, 93. Forplayson
Leo'sname, see 3.97; 4.9, 154-56; 7.88-93. See also note 59 above.The Satireswerenot in-
tendedfor immediatepublicationandhencewerefrankerin theircriticismsthanthe Furioso.
See Portnerfor the idea (not entirelypersuasive)that Ariosto'sNegromantewas not per-
formed in Rome becauseLeo saw in it an unflatteringallusionto himself.On Leo'spositive
reactionto a Romanperformanceof Ariosto'sSuppositiand to the Negromante episode,see
Catalano,vol. 1, 376-85.
65Inthe allegoricalintaglioof canto26, Avarice,personifiedasa chimericalbeastcombin-
ing featuresof ass, wolf, lion, and fox, is depicted ravagingthe world. Also depicted are
Europeanrulersfrom the earlyCinquecento,includingLeo, who slaythe monsterwith their
liberality(34.6; 36.1). The languagein which Leo is presented,however,identifieshim with
the beasthe ostensiblyopposes.The worstdepredationsof the beastareamong"cardinalie
papi"and have "contaminated the lovelyseatof Peter"(32.6-8). In languagelike that associ-
ated with Pope and Orc in canto 17, the beastarrogates"thekeys ... of heavenand of the
abyss"(33.7-8). The beastis partlion, while Leo appearsdepictedallegoricallyas his bestial
namesake.Twoof the otherthreeanimalsthatconstituteAvarice,the wolf andthe ass,alsoap-
pear in canto 17. The intaglio depicts Leo in the curious act of biting the ass-earsof the
monster(36.2). In the first, 1516, redactionthe imageis madeevenmorecuriousby the am-
biguouslanguagein whichit is described:"aveaattaccatel'asinineorecchie"(1960, 878). Since
"attaccate" can mean "attached" as well as "attacked," we arefreeto see the ass-earson Leo as
muchas on Avarice(cf. 17.112.2:"comel'asinogiaqueldel leone"),with a possibleallusionto
the OvidianMidas,the mythicalparadigmof avaricewith ill-concealedass-earswho, inciden-
tally,is a very poor judge of art (Metamorphoses 11.146-93). Fora readingof the allegorical
in
intaglio light of its "entrelacement"with the restof canto26, see Hoffman,1999. Forother
examplesof such bivalentgrammaticalconstructionsin the poem, see Ascoli, 1987, 355-56
and n., 359-60 and n. 172.
6Letter no. 26 in Ariosto 1965. CatalanodocumentsAriosto'srelationshipto Ippolito
extensively;see esp. vol. 1, pp. 434-54.
throughout the Furioso,67 and in particular that the etymological, and

mythological, resonances of his classicizing name are, like Leo's, made into
a key structuring principle of the poem.68 I hope that the strong evidence
that analogous procedures are at work in canto 17 vis-a-vis Leo will lend
further credence to a case - Ippolito's - that was at the center of Ariosto's
world at the time of the poem's first publication, and hence was even more
carefully relegated to the occulted byways of ironic interlace, than the one
that concerns me here.
Let us now return to the question of narrativestructurewith which I be-
gan. If Orlandofirioso does indeed make a turn away from the openness of
romance to the closure of epic - and in so doing identify itself and its author
closely with the ideological values and political interests of the Este court -
nonetheless, the voice of resistance and of critique, oscillating between per-
sonal ressentimentand acute political analysis, still persists. We can locate it
specifically at the points of juncture and fracturebetween the disparate ele-
ments of history and fiction, narrative and commentary, story and figure,
that the poet weaves together into a mobile web of shifting and reciprocally
qualifying perspectives. Though it is easy enough to say that such an enter-
prise ultimately serves the master discourse of courtly ideology, it is also
worth noting that no more direct criticism was possible, at least not in a form
that commanded a significant readership.Ariosto could not have openly at-
tacked the man upon whom he, and through him a large number of brothers
and sisters, depended for their livelihood, a man who was known for his im-
petuous recourse to violent methods - no more than he could indict Leo
openly in a poem destined for wide circulation in the Italian courts and
which, as noted earlier,required and bore Leo's imprimatur for publication.
In other words, for Ariosto and his contemporariesit was a choice between an
occulted, and perhaps therefore unhearable irony, and "the silence of the
lambs," to take our poet's pastoralmotif one, unpleasant, step further.
III. CONCLUSIONS
As suggested near the beginning of this essay, Ariosto extends the Boiardan
practice of narrative entrelacementto include and to foreground non-narra-
7Cf.Quint, 1983, 88-89; Zatti, 1990, 147-49; Looney,1990-1991. Durling (135-50)

arguesfor the seriousnessof the encomia, though with important qualifications;Baillet
makesa less subte casefor this position.
68Thesymbolicallychargedimageryof "cavalleria" and horsemanship(Giamatti;Dalla
Palma)is subtendedby the classicalmyth of Hippolytus,with its thematicsof blind desire
and mad violence (Ascoli, 1987, 382-89). Ariosto'sprocedureof fusingclassicalmyths and
contemporarypersonswith the poem'scharactersis describedin Ceserani(485).
tive formal elements. Among other things, this technique permits the
suggestive juxtaposition of Ariosto'schivalric fictions with the world of con-
temporary history, whose materials enter the poem through poems,
ekphrases, prophecies, and other "asides."These juxtapositions are often not
simply formal. That is, the proems often make explicit a moralizing analogy
between the narratives of the poem and some contemporary issue of note.
Usually, however, what is made explicit is culturally normative or positive, in
the sense that the views expressed are compatible with those of a dominant
culture, not that they are always or even mostly couched in the affirmative
mode. Culturally negative or subversiveoutcomes are, on the whole, left im-
plicit - at the level of structure. Attacks on patrons, or on figures of
unassailable prestige, such as the Pope, can only be deduced by an active in-
terpretation of ostentatious formal features- such as those discussed above.
Ariosto in this way can have his cake (the patronage and cultural prestige
that a poem celebrating chivalric values and Estense genealogy affords) and
consume it too (in its implied critique of those values and that regime).
Because the activity of critique is largelypresent in the form of structural
possibility, and not as explicit utterance, it is always possible to doubt its ex-
istence as a product of authorial intention. And yet many of the formal
features of the Furioso, including those just mentioned, seem gratuitous if
such a critical counter-narrativeis not being deployed through them. None-
theless, though I would insist that these featuresdo, in effect, insistenty invite
the sort of speculative reading that I have given to them, I would also argue
that they cannot be treated as keys to a straightforward political allegory.
Their interpretation is very much open to the judgment of an individual
reader- whether of Ariosto'stime or our own - and is thus ambiguous by
nature. For example, the limited frameworkof this analysisoffers two sets of
polar oppositions through which to evaluate significance that would allow
different interpretersto arriveat very different conclusions. One might stress
the status of canto 17 as a serious interrogationof the causes and cures of po-
litical crisis, or one might insist on the personal and venal vendetta of Ariosto
against the Pope who failed to make good on promised patronage.We might
see Ariosto'srecourseto oblique and allusivetechniques of political-socialcrit-
icism as a cunningly subversivestrategy,calculated to undermine the powers
that be - or we could see it instead as a failureof nerve, as an unwillingness
to stand up for what one believes, combined with a courtier'sreadinessto be
appropriatedby a power structurewhose vices he knows all too well (cf. Casti-
glione, Libro del Cortegiano,esp. 4.6-10). The reading offered here suggests
that we should not be too quick to opt for either pole in either of the two op-
positions just sketched. We might even go so far as to imagine that Ariosto,
among other things, is dramatizing the conflicting motives that operate in a
worksuchas his, makingit at once pettyand public-spirited, bold and pusil-

lanimous. But even this "open"readingis guided by personalpreferences
ratherthanby any ultimatecertaintyas to the poet'sintentions.
Moreover,I shouldlike to stress,it is not only a questionof whatAriosto
did or did not wish to express.The formalinnovationsof the Furiosowere
not only a responseto historicalcircumstances;they were also a response
madeavailableand evennecessaryby suchcircumstances. IfAriostowent be-
yond Boiardo, it was because Boiardo had taught him the basics and
refinementsof intratextualnarrativeinterlaceto which he could add the in-
tertextualand historicaldimensionsthat I have pointed to here.And if he
was able to face historicalcrisisby textualizingit, this was becauseVirgil,
amongothers,had alreadyfounda vehiclefor doing so, a vehicleunavailable
to Boiardo,but one whichAriosto'sculture- wherethe Latinhumanisttra-
ditionwasableto find moredirectexpressionin Italianvernaculartextsthan
it typicallyhad in the previouscentury- madeavailableto him.69If he was
ableto explorethe breakdownof the ideologicalgivensof the Quattrocento
and before- such as a theologicallygroundedpolitics,the securedifferen-
tiation between Christian and pagan, and so on - it was at least partly
becauseexternaleventshad made the arbitrarynatureof such assumptions
all too apparent,as it had also madeevidentthe need to recuperate,reform,
and/orrevolutionizethem.
I hope it is clearby now that the formalinnovationsof the Furiosoare
freightedwith ideologicalsignificance,that fundamental,historically-deter-
minedrupturesin culturalmeaningaremakingthemselvesfelt at the levelof
form.Machiavelli,one might posit heuristically,facedmuch the samecrisis
as Ariosto, but tackledit directlyat the semanticlevel, while Ariosto'sre-
sponsewas preponderantlysyntacticand formal.70But such an opposition
falsifiesboth the complexrhetoricityof Machiavelliand the high political
content of the Furioso.The theoreticalclaim of this essay,then, is that the
opposition- common equallyto "textualist" and "historicist"scholarship
69Dueexceptionmade for Poliziano'sStanzeper la Giostraand Favolad'Orfio.Recent
workby Fumagalli,Cavallo(1993), Looney(1996 and 1998), Micocci,and RichardTristano
(in progress)has stressedthe significanthumanisticdimensionin Boiardo'scareer.As noted
earlier,recentcriticismhasshownconsistentengagementin theInnamorato with not only Ovid
but alsoVirgilandotherclassicalpoets (note 19 above).Still,thereis a worldof differencebe-
tween,say,Boiardo'stranslationof a Latintranslationof HerodotusandMachiavelli's detailed,
if idiosyncratic,commentaryon Livy,or betweenBoiardo'soccasionalVirgilianallusions,and
Ariosto'sadaptationof aVirgilianmodel(on the lastpoint seenote 14 above).Bruscagli,1995,
xx-xxvi,arguesconvincinglythat Boiardodeliberatelysubordinateshis use of classicalandca-
nonicalvernacular materials(e.g., Boccaccio)to the worldof Carolingianromance,whichmay
accountfor the differencesfromAriosto,who ostentatiouslyimitatesthe cassics.
70SeealsoAscoli, 2000b.
- between structure and history, form and content, is both false and perni-
cious. Historical understanding moves through formal analysis; form is
bound inextricably to history.
As a final consideration, let me suggest that a historical analysis of the
Furiososform that is also a formal analysis of the poem's representations of
history will necessarily do for the transition from its first and second, forty
canto, editions (1516 and 1521) to the final, forty-six canto, version of 1532
what I have already done for the shift from the Innamorato to the first
Furioso. While I do not have space to include extended reflections on this
topic here, my sharp focus on the figures of Leo and Ippolito invites specu-
lation on the crucial fact that by 1532 the former had been dead for eleven
years and the latter for twelve. When the final edition appeared, of course,
referencesto these two, and to many other people and events, had lost most
of the topical, historical force they had had in 1516 or even 1521.71Yet Leo
and Ippolito retain, and even expand, their decisive structural-thematicroles
in 1532, suggesting how basic they had been to the internal structure of the
poem from its inception. Defunct or not, Leo still remains the focus of can-
tos 17 and 26, while the late Ippolito continues as the poem's explicit
dedicatee and the focal point of the principal Este encomia, especially in
cantos 3 and 46.72 This is so notwithstanding increased references to Ario-
sto's second patron, Duke Alfonso d'Este, and to the Emperor CharlesV, the
figure who dominated Italian and European politics in the 1520s and
1530s, as Julius and Leo had during the first twenty years of the century.
The tendency of the final Furiosoto include figures from different his-
torical moments side by side, referring to them in a newly generalized
present tense that belies historical chronology and "actuality,"has been aptly
dubbed "synchronization"by Alberto Casadei.73Against Casadei'sinsistence
on the full historical engagement of the 1532 edition, however, I would ar-
gue that this process furthers the larger process of the textualization of
history at work in the first Furiosoby reinforcing the reader'ssense of a poetic
temporality increasinglydistinct from historical chronology. This point then
leads us toward the distinctly unfashionable notion that the 1516 edition
was more immediately a response to historical crisis than the final version.74
71Casadei,1988b, 17 n. 20, astutelyobservesthat the changedcontextof the 1532 edi-
tion changesthe significanceof segmentsthat arenot changedin themselves- the notion
deservesconsiderableattentionand development.
72Thechangesin the treatmentnoted by Casadei,1988b, 24-27, 55, 75-76 aresignifi-
cant but do not alterIppolito'sfundamentalplacein the poem.
73Casadei,1988b, 50-56 and 153.
74SeeHendersonfor an interestingattemptto demonstrateAriosto'shypersensitivity to
his immediatehistoricalcontextduringvariousphasesof compositionof the firstFurioso.
It has been a topos of Ariosto criticism that the 1532 poem is more
aware of crisis than its precursor,75but, as we have seen, that is only partially
true. Historically, in fact, the 1520s and early 1530s were less immediately
threatening to Ferraraand to Ariosto personally than the earlier period.76
Furthermore, by 1532 the outlines of a new order, social and political, were
emerging that tended to guarantee stability for the Italian peninsula, even if
at the cost of the loss of political autonomy and of a certain openness of cul-
tural possibilities that had been an important condition sine qua non for the
achievements of such as Machiavelli and Ariosto.7 The underlying point is
that the crisis that dominated the first two decades of the sixteenth century
was such because it was not only a time of military-political upheaval - in
this sense, it is hard to find a time in human history not in crisis - but also
one of a radical destabilization in ideological assumptions, in naturalized
cultural boundaries (Bourdieu'sdoxa).78By the time of the appearanceof the
third and last Furioso,the project of ideological recuperation and reinstanti-
ation was well under way - brilliantly represented by such transitional
works as Castiglione's Cortegianoand Bembo's Prosedella volgarlingua.79
Nonetheless, although the 1532 edition is a far less direct product and
representation of historical crisis than the 1516 edition, it is, for this very
reason, more able to thematize crisis and to transform it from a series of ad
hominem attacks and cris de coeurinto an analysis of ideology in more gen-
75SeeCaretti;Saccone,1983; cf. Bigi, 33, andAscoli, 1987, 9-10 contra.
76TothisextentI agreewithCasadei(1988b,154),whodistinguishes
betweenthelocal
Ferrarese concernsin the 1516 editionandthe national,Italianconcernsof the 1532 edition.
However,in doing so he trivializesthe presenceof 17.73-79 in the 1516 edition (Ariosto,
1960, 517-19; cf. Casadei,1988b, 41) andunderstatesthe internationalcharacterof the bat-
tles that were being fought in and around Este territory, thus misunderstanding the
significanceof a crisisof the local (nothingless than the end of a way of life in the peninsula
basedon small,local states- Ferrara,Urbino,Florence,to namejust a few).
77In1532 the long term negativeoutcomeof the epoch of crisisin Italywas dearlyvis-
ible: Italywas at the mercyof foreign invadersand especiallythe EmperorCharlesV; the
papacy'sauthoritywas underattackby Lutheranreformsand subjectto the violent indignity
of the Sackof Rome;and so on. Yet,Ariostoand Ferrarawereratherbetteroff than they had
been in 1516, not to mention the late teens when the dark CinqueCantiwere apparently
composed (see Casadei, 1988a; Quint, 1996; Zatti, 1996, chap. 2). Having sided with
CharlesagainstClement and the Leagueof Cognac in 1527, Alfonso had finallyrecovered
Reggio and Modena.While the reconciliationof the Pope and the Emperorin 1529-1530
may have been worrisome,it had createdno serious problemsfor the Ferrareseby 1532.
Moreover,Ariostopersonallywas shownparticularfavorsby the Emperor- and in general
had begunto enjoymoreof the fruitsof famethat his immenselysuccessfulpoem, as well as
his variousplays,now affordedhim (cf. Bigi, 34-35).
78Bourdieu,164-71.
79Cf.Bigi, 66.
eral and reflective terms.80Returning to our example, it can be shown that

even as Leo and Ippolito tend to lose their historical specificity and to func-
tion exclusively within the intratextual dynamics of the Furioso,81they are
being redeployed within complex explorations of the problematic relation-
ship of poetry and power, poet and patron, in general.
In fact, one of the main principles of revision visibly at work in 1532 is
the extension and transformation of key episodes from 1516, including ep-
isodes with significant topical content, in a process that hovers between the
intertextual and intratextual.82For example, language and imagery that is
closely linked to Ippolito and Leo becomes a primary building block of the
one major addition to the genealogical narrative, the story of Ruggiero,
Bradamante, and Leone told in cantos 44-46.
Though this point could be made in a variety of ways, one example
must here stand for all - the fate of the intratextualechoes of Inferno32-33
on which the critique of Leo hinges. In particular, the prominent stylistic
device of"pii che . . . pot&"that marks derivation from Inferno 33.75, in
1532 also becomes an intratextual link between apparently unrelated epi-
sodes.83In 1516, there is a single use of this stylistic device, confined (as we
have seen) to what was then canto 15 (17 in 1532), whose allusive force was
then sharpened in 1521 by the introduction of the referenceto the Orco as
"fier pastor" (Ariosto, 1960, 508). In 1532, this stylistic device was intro-
duced at two crucial junctures in canto 21. The canto offers a displaced
version of the Hippolytus/Phaedra story in the tale of the faithful Filandro
and the faithless Gabrina, and thus, like canto 17, constituted a crucial
nexus between historical personage and literary narrative, as it also offers a
variant on the Orrigille/Grifone story. The echoes appear in stanza 54 (lines
7-8), which signals Filandro'sdescent from exemplar of"fede" into willing
80Themajornarrativeadditionsto the poem addresscentralideologicalconcerns- the
politicsof tyranny;the ethicsof"fede;"the culturalconstructionof genderidentity- which,
althoughpresentin 1516, arefarmoreexplicitlytreatedin 1532 (DallaPalma,219-25).
81Cf.Ascoli, 1987, 388.
82Thisphenomenonis moreobviousin the caseof two of the four majornarrativead-
ditions:the Olimpiaepisodeclearlydoublesthe earlierepisodeof Angelicaand the Orcaand
the Marganorre episodeis clearlya palinodicrewritingof the episodeof the "femineomicide"
(cantos19-20 in the 1532 edition).The "Roccadi Tristano"episodeis lessspecificallylinked
to a single 1516 episode (though it does providean oblique commentaryon Bradamante's
jealous despair),but it too has a function of rewriting- most especiallyin the ekphras-
tic-historicalpassagewhich recantsthe pro-Frenchbias (howeverqualified)of 1516. Of the
Ruggiero-Leone-Bradamante addition,I shallspeakbelow.
83Cabanihas recentlygivenus a lengthycatalogueof variouswaysin whichAriostouses
verbalrepetitionto connect disparateepisodes,though she does not discussthis particular
example.
pawn of Gabrina'slust, and in stanza 3 (lines 7-8), which implicates Zerbino

in the same foolish adherence to a rigid and self-destructive ethos of "fede"
as Filandro.84Canto 21, in turn, became in 1532 the primary verbal and
thematic source for the episode of Ruggiero, Bradamante, and Leone, and
especially of its complex exploration of the ideology of faith.85Prominently
featured are two additional echoes of Inferno 33.75, which are, within the
intratexual economy of the poem, equally echoes of Furioso 17.48 and 21.3
and 54, at stanzas 34 and 56 of canto 45.86
Once the intricate verbal/thematic concatenation that leads from canto
17 through canto 21 to cantos 44-46 has been identified, one might then
speculate that Ruggiero's misrepresentation of his identity when he wears
Leone's armor into combat with Bradamante (45.55, 69) is indebted to the
early episode of Grifone and Martano's exchange of armor and identity,
which had similarly near tragic consequences. And one might wonder
whether the character Leone's name is not derived from Leo's, thus consti-
tuting the most fitting emblem for the sublimation of a historical personage
into the narrativeeconomy of the poem.87
Here a crucial question arises.The addition of the materials in cantos 44
and 45 cearly gives the genealogical narrative,whose purpose is to imagine
an historical line leading from the time of the poem into the contemporary
world of Estense Ferrara,greaterprominence and centrality in the 1532 edi-
tion, reinforcing the sense of epic closure.88How is it then possible to argue
that the 1532 edition is lesshistorical in orientation than that of 1516? My
point, however, is that history has a different place in 1532 than 1516, not
at all that it is absent (how could it be?). The difference is between a rela-
84Fora detailedreadingof canto 21, seeAscoli, 2000b.

85Foradditionalelaborationof this argumentsee Ascoli, 1987, 330-31 and n122; and
Ascoli, 2000b. For debateconcerningthe value of (ethical) "faith"in the Furioso,see also
Durling, 167-76; Saccone,1974 and 1983;Wiggins;Bonifazi;and Zatti, 1990, esp. 91-111.
8Furthermore, key terms that appear in the earlierAriostan echoings are found
throughoutthe two cantos reinforcingthematicconnections:"timor"45.34-37 (5 times);
"ostinazione"44.37.7, 44.45.1, 45.86.6, 45.107.6; "promesso"44.35.4, 44.47.8, 44.53.3,
44.58.6, 44.69.2, 44.75.4, 45.6.1, 45.22.1, 45.60.1, 45.108.3, 45.109.3, 45.116.2.
87Possiblefurthersupportfor this hypothesiscomesfrom 1) the ostentatiouslinking of
a nominallion with a "roarer"(Ruggiero)which perhapsrecallsAriosto'searlierexegesisof
the papalname ("sceltoil fieronome / perchetu ruggi");2) the fact that Leoneis the son of
an emperornamedafterthe originalCostantino(both becauseof the earlierallusionto Con-
stantine'sdonationin dose proximityto Leo'snameandbecausethe memoryof Constantine
alwaysevokesproblemsof papalauthority);and, moretenuously,3) a seriesof locutionsus-
ing the crucialadjective"fiero,"one of which conflatesthe two Danteanpassagesechoed in
canto 17- "fierodolore"(45.57.1; cf. 44.81.3; 85.7).
88Marsh; Bigi, 53; Casadei,1992; cf. Quint, 1979.
tively direct experience of disruptive historical crisis, as well as an immediate

sense of connection to the political-social world, on the one hand, and, on
the other, the fantasy of cultural continuity and stability embodied in the
marriage of Bradamante and Ruggiero.89The Ruggiero-Bradamante-Leone
episode, then, sets the myth of Estense genealogy in sharp relief, but also
tends to fold it increasingly into the plot of the poem, to make it part and
parcel of the Furiososchivalric fictions.9
At the beginning of this essay I argued that the essence of Ariosto'sstrat-
egy for confronting and absorbing historical crisis was the deployment of a
combined intertextual and intratextualentrelacement that pitted non-narra-
tive formal and thematic elements against narrative. By 1532, however, the
non-narrativeelements of historical crisiswere being increasingly,though not
completely, reabsorbedinto the primary narrativeof the Furiosoand specifi-
cally into the story that promotes the illusion of an unbroken and relatively
untroubled link between the chivalric past and the present-day Ferraraof
Ariosto and the Este family. This turn to the representationof history as nar-
rative, which stabilizes the relationshipbetween past and present, fiction and
history, is the antithesis of the representationof history as crisisand in crisis.
Curiously enough, although the neo-Virgilian model of genealogy is what
turns the Furiosoaway from romance and toward epic, and thus, in Quint's
terms, constitutes the fundamental rupturebetween Ariosto and Boiardo, this
development also and equally constitutes a return to the Innamoratoand a
move away from the most radicalinnovations of the first Furioso.Not long af-
ter the episode of the Orco, Boiardo inauguratesthe genealogical narrativein
which Ruggiero and Bradamante become the founders of the Este dynasty
89In1516, the poem'spenultimateepisode(whatbecamecantos42 and43 in 1532) was

the futile journeyof Rinaldodown throughthe Italianpeninsulain orderto join Orlando
andco. at the battleof Lipadusa(Ariosto,1960). The foci of the episodearean ekphrasticde-
scriptionof a castlenearMantuaand two interpolated,neo-Boccacciannovelle.All of these
materialsevokethe originsand the cultureof Ferraraand her sistercity,Mantua(whereIsa-
bellad'Estereignedas Duchess).Cf. Casadei,1992; Martinez,1994 and 1999.
90Pampaloni(644) and Marshboth takethe Easternlocale of the Ruggiero-Leoneen-
counter,and especiallythe city of Belgrade,as topicallyallusiveto the Turkishthreatof 1529.
Evenif this is so, its obliqueapproachis a farcryfromthe explicitpresentationof suchtopics
exemplifiedby the proemand digressionof canto 17, perhapsbecause,howeverlargein the
abstractthe paganmenacemight seem, it did not have the scandalousimmediacythat the
Italianwarsdid (rememberthat in 17.73-79 Ariosto,like Dante, sees such extramuralcon-
flicts as normal and a desirablealternativeto warfareamong Christians).A much more
horrifying(and transparentlyallegorical)"easternadventure"is the civil war of the Cinque
Cantienactedin the hereticalprecinctsof Prague.I would tend in any caseto think that the
emphasisshouldfallon the appearanceof an imperialheir,the son of a namesakeof Constan-
tine, in an eraof renewedimperialism.
(3.5). And the encomia of the Este line and their connections comprise the
only historical materials that are integrated into Boiardo's poem (e.g.,
2.21.55-60, 25.42-56, 27.50-59; 3.5.5-28).91
By 1532, then, Ariosto had begun to do what later readersalmost always
do to a text - reduce the undigested signs of its own and its author'shistoric-
ity into the self-contained forms of narrative and into a generalizable,
non-local, thematics of temporal existence. In the world of the 1532 Furioso,
Leo X is no longer himself, or even the caricaturedobject of Ariosto's ressenti-
ment - he is a figuration of the bestial abuse of power and the monstrous
ingratitude of patrons. How great the difference between those two editions
and those two moments in Ariosto'spoetic careeractuallyis may be seen in the
very different treatment of the two historical figures who dominated the 20s
and 30s and who were the protagonistsof the Sack of Rome, the symbolic cul-
mination of the crisis that had opened with the French invasion of 1494:
Emperor CharlesV and Pope Clement VII. Charles is given, in 1532, a glow-
ing encomium (15.23-36) that reflectsthe increasingFerrareseattachment to
him as well as his apparentpatronageof Ariosto.92In a distinctly Biblical and
prophetic language with which we are quite familiar, the Ariostan narrator
imagines a new and greaterimperium: "solo un ovile sia, solo un pastore"(let
there be one sheepfold, one shepherd only; 26.8, echoing John 10:16).93But
here, as I understandit, there is no subvertinginterlaceat work, notwithstand-
ing the convenient textual proximity of two Ariostan monsters, Caligorante
and Orrilo. On the other hand is Leo'scousin and eventual successorin the pa-
pacy, Clement, who in his reign certainly represented just as significant an
historical problem for Ferraraas Leo had earlier,but who is never mentioned
by name in the poem, and who receivesonly a single, glancing referenceto his
imprisonment after the Sack (33.55-56). The older Ariosto, one might specu-
late, has retreated to the safety of a relatively uncritical position vis-a-vis
contemporary history (again, much closer to Boiardo'sstance) - where the
powerful are praisedwhen advantageousto the author and ignored when they
create problems. Still, the figure of Leo, the "Pastor... [col] fiero nome," lin-
gers on in the background- a subtle reminder that neither literarytexts nor
historicalcontexts are quite what they seem and that the crisisout of which the
Furiosofirst grew has left an indelible mark on Ariosto'spages.
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY
"Cf. Casadei,1988b, 22.

92Bigi,ed., 1:609-10 n. 18; Catalano,1:608.
93Onthe tendencyto makeCharlesthe objectof apocalypticpropheciespreviouslyap-
plied almostexcusivelyto popes,see Stinger,120-21 and324 n. 11. See alsoCasadei,1988b,
44-45; Yates,chap. 1.
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1SeeBigi, 10 and passim.

ings - of episode, character,image, phrase,and narrativetechnique -

5Rajna;Parker;Javitch,1984 and 1985;Ascoli, 1987; Looney,1996; Martinez,1999.

Though both topics can be understood as "intratextual"features of the

5Cf. Zatti, 1990, 10-11 and n.

interlocutors and circumstances, we should recognize that Ariosto's adapta-

27Iuse "intertextuality"herein a specificallyliterary-historical

Although the two kinds of new materialmight seem to be antithetical-

32Cf. Durling, 133-34; Bigi, 43.

Gradasso and Mandricardo (3.3.24-60).34 Most intriguing, from the per-

Now God permitsthat we should be punishedby peoplesperhapsworse

36Cf.Bigi, 26 and 40; Casadei,1988b, 9-10.

A timewill comewhen to despoiltheirshoreswewill go, if everwe becomebet-

reflections on his own time grow out of the characterRodomonte's destruc-

42Thisis not the only historicalproemwith a subversiveagenda.A suggestiveexample,

ForGod'ssake,my Lord,let us ceaseto speakof wrathand to sing of death

Throughthe citytwo crystallineriversrun,wateringan infinitenumberof

the-Beanstalk and the pastoral tradition.46The ostensible purposes of the

46Rajna,282-84; Baldan,29 et passim;Micocci,48-54.

Are you, Spain,not nearto Africa,which has offendedyou farmore than

48"Sorianiin queltempoaveanousanza/ d'armarsi a questaguisadi Ponente./ Forseve

Leo is explicitly treated as a potential force for good, a pastoral protector of

ever,Dante is a far strongerpresence- note the echoes of the passagescited previouslyin

53""Da Pierle tegno;e dissemich'i'erri/ anzi ad aprirch'atenerlaserrata"(9.127-28).

herd]."5 The furtherelement of a roaring("perchetu ruggi"[so that you

5CatalanodiscussesAriosto'srelationshipwith Leo at length(vol. 1, esp.pages352-87)

ing Furioso17.3-5, 73-79. Forpastoralmetaphoricslinkedto Leo in one way or another,see

throughout the Furioso,67 and in particular that the etymological, and

7Cf.Quint, 1983, 88-89; Zatti, 1990, 147-49; Looney,1990-1991. Durling (135-50)

worksuchas his, makingit at once pettyand public-spirited, bold and pusil-

eral and reflective terms.80Returning to our example, it can be shown that

pawn of Gabrina'slust, and in stanza 3 (lines 7-8), which implicates Zerbino

84Fora detailedreadingof canto 21, seeAscoli, 2000b.

tively direct experience of disruptive historical crisis, as well as an immediate

89In1516, the poem'spenultimateepisode(whatbecamecantos42 and43 in 1532) was

"Cf. Casadei,1988b, 22.

Cantos 1 and 8." Arion O.S. 5: In Studi e problemidi criticatestuale,

Energy in Renaissance England. .1992. "Lapoliticaestensenel Fu-

Ferrara,eds. J. Salmons and W. Mo- Rajna,Pio. 1975. Lefonti dell' Orlandofu-

Vinaver, Eugene. 1971. The Rise of Ro- Yates,Frances.1975. Astraea:TheImperial

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