Love

The theme of love in the Furioso is closely bound to that of desire and is presented as central right from the opening lines, in I, 1-2: ‘Le donne, i cavallier, l’arme, gli amori, / le cortesie, l’audaci imprese io canto’. The theme of love is grafted upon the chivalrous epic with the mediation of the ‘Breton cycle’, that was already present in Matteo Maria Boiardo, which enriches the texture of the epic with the experience of love. In the book Ariosto pursues love, which is seen as both unavoidable and unattainable. At the centre of the narrative technique stirred by love there is the chivalrous quête, typified by a play on flights and pursuits, of errors and misunderstandings. The representation of love and desire resides in the figure of Angelica, the fascinating queen of Catai, at once sensual and evanescent, pursued by Orlando with tenacity and obstinacy, and the object of ardent desire also on the part of Rinaldo (who does not lose his mind but falls out of love when he drinks at the fount of oblivion). Alongside this primary theme there is also the love between Ruggiero and Bradamante, that lives through a series of vicissitudes, already found in Orlando Innamorato and which end with Ruggiero’s conversion to Christianity, functional to the theme of the encomium of the book. Love traverses the whole book in various ways and presents itself with different characteristics: there is Olimpia’s heroic and pathetic sentiment in IX, 21-94; the deceitful love of Ariodante and Ginevra in V, 5-92 e in VI, 1-14; the sensual and voluble love of Doralice in XIV, 39-63 and in many other parts (XXIII, 70; XXIV, 72; XXVII, 102-107; XXX, 71-72); and, lastly, the pathetic love of Brandimarte and Fiordiligi in XXXIX, 38-43, XLI, 32 and XLIII, 154-164.

Cesare Ripa, Iconologia del Cavaliere Cesare Ripa Perugino Notabilmente accresciuta d’immagini, di annotazoni e di fatti dall’Abate Cesare Orlandi (Iconology of Cesare Ripa Perugino annotated by Abbott Cesare Orlandi), vol. I, Perugia, Stamperia di Piergiorgio Costantini, 1764-1767, p. 119.