Irony

Irony has always been recognised to be a characteristic element of the Furioso. According to Hegel Ariosto’s irony tends to ‘dissolve’ the mediaeval chivalrous world. The poet activates irony through the adaptation and transformation of the traditional material and forms, giving life to a whole series of possibilities, from homage to parody. Irony is in some sense the backbone to the book, it is the harmonizing element of material that is multi-centred  and acts as a tool for reason in the face of the menace of error and folly, and the possibility of sudden deviations between what is real and what is marvellous. In general it manifests itself through the procedure of straniamento or estrangement, with a sudden change of perspective within the narrative that demythologises the literary element, revealing a small imperfection or an asymmetrical element or an incongruence. From a structural point of view this allows for a frequent change of theme and the changes of register typical of a narrative based on  entrelacement or interlacement. This is functional to Ariosto’s relativism, to the thematic and conceptual varietas or variety, to the changes of perspective and the changes of point of view that make Ariosto’s romance a work based on a continual  alternation between truths, which are first admitted and then denied. Irony ideologically presides over the book, governs its structural errant and flexible vocation, dismantles the horizon of the reader’s expectations, and it destroys the planned perspectives of roles and actions.