Deceit

Ariosto’s universe of the Furioso is dominated by a network of obstacles and menaces that make the vicissitudes of the poem highly unforeseeable. Together with folly and error, the other centre of ambiguity and contradiction within the book is represented by deceit and illusion. In Ariosto’s world men and women wend their way following false images and illusory schemes, they are captivated by amorous desire, they pursue one another, they chase unrequited sentiments using, within this mechanism of illusionary projections, magic and the marvellous. At the heart of deceit there is of course love which sets in motion situations based on the deceit and the illusion of seeing and possessing what one cannot see or possess. In this sense the octaves dedicated to the so called ‘castle of crossed destinies’, Atlante’s enchanted palace, in cantos XI, XII e XIII, see the confluence of all the themes tied to the sphere of the irrational, united in the sign of deceit and illusion. Interpersonal relations are in the Furioso marked by a structural transparency: there is no way of understanding behaviour, similarly to what occurs in Castiglione, in Machiavelli or in Guicciardini. One of the most evident symbols of the deceitful/disquieting dimension of amorous relationships is represented by the character, originally drawn from Boiardo, of Orrigille in canto XVI. Orrigille, iniqua e senza fede (iniquitous and without faith), abandons the young knight Grifone (brother of Aquilante, known as il bianco or the White because he is protected by a fairy clad in white) for Martano. When Grifone goes to visit her in Antioch, where she was with the coward Martano, Orrigille not only passes off her new lover  as her brother, with a deceit carefully prepared whilst she waited for Grifone to arrive, but she scolds the unfortunate knight for having left her too much on her own.

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. III, Perugia, Stamperia di Piergiorgio Costantini, 1764-1767, p. 270.