Orlando furioso: the ottava rima

The ottava rima is the narrative meter by definition, introduced by Boccaccio in Filostrato and in Teseida (but certainly used before Boccaccio), widely used in the cantari as we can see in the Cantare of Florio & Bianciofiore. For the development of the ottava or octave most important is the role of the XV century author Poliziano who, in Stanze per la giostra di Giuliano de’Medici, confers this meter an unmistakable lyrical imprint, aimed more at contemplation and description than narrative. Ariosto carries out a masterful mediation between Poliziano’s ottava lyrical model and that of traditional narrative ottava, from the oral tradition, inherited from Boiardo and most popular, giving life to the so called ottava d’oro (golden octave). Within the closed ottava, used by Poliziano, Ludovico inserted stringent and compact narrative rhythms that keep the narrative within a regular metric setting.  According to Contini ‘it is a matter for him of rising to the challenge: keep Poliziano’s lyrical achievements and not renounce to the narrative character’. Ariosto confers his ottava a new plasticity, emancipating it from the formal schematics of the literature of oral tradition but also the closed self-sufficiency of Poliziano’s ottava. The structure of the ottava generally foresees six hendecasyllables in alternate rhyme, giving a composite form to a multiform reality, and two final verses in rima baciata that seem to lead the multi-centred narrative toward a sort of final convergence. The result is guaranteed by the introduction of the ottava rima used in Petrarch’s style, with an operation that was conducted in parallel by both Ariosto and Pietro Bembo in his Stanze. The ottava in the Furioso is characterised by precise eurhythmic rules and by stylistic and rhetorical procedures such as symmetry, antithesis, parallelism, and dittology. The melodic rhythm is also given by the reduced use of enjambements which rarely break up the metric-syntactic unity of the verse giving lightness and elasticity to the narrative.