Marvellous

Along with the themes of folly and error in the Furioso there is a theme that marks the differentiation of reality as to norm. This is the so called meraviglioso or marvellous. This term defines the magical and prodigious dimension that in the romance is set alongside the real and credible dimension.  The meraviglioso is the expression of a parallel reality made up of prodigious events, exceptional encounters, and magic powers conferred upon certain characters or objects. The selfsame Angelica has magic powers, and the role of the magicians Alcina, Atlante, Merlino, and Melissa is important. Ariosto’s meraviglioso, which includes metaphor (Astolfo transformed into myrtle in canto VI) or pure imagination (the winged horse the Hippogryph in canto IV), reaches its climax with the passage about Atlante’s enchanted palace (cantos XI-XII-XIII) which scholars have termed, prompted by Italo Calvino, the castello dei destini incrociati or castle of crossed destinies. The knights, coming from different paths through the forest, reach Atlante’s palace and are entrapped within it when each follows the semblance of his desire, in a sort of incessant hide and seek. Orlando follows the fake image of Angelica; Ruggiero pursues the fictitious figure of Bradamante. Magic here expresses itself as obsessive projection of one’s dreams within a delineated and finite architectural context. But, as with the case of Orlando’s sanity, first lost and then found, the remission of degeneration is possible in this case too. Astolfo, in canto XXII, liberates the enchanted palace thanks to his booklet with the explanations on magic and spells, melting ‘in fumo e in nebbia’ (in smoke and mist) Atlante’s palace and freeing the characters embroiled within it. Magic is also correlated to the theme of simulation and illusion that regulates human relations, in a nebulous condition of false images, misunderstandings, deceit, misguided hopes, expectations that are never fulfilled.