Boiardo

Was the contemporary author with which Ariosto was most contiguous both for territorial reasons (the Este court at Ferrara) and for reasons to do with the invention of the Furioso, conceived of as a gionta or continuation of Boiardo’s Innamorato. Perhaps the two met in Ferrara on occasion of the manifestations wanted by Ercole I in 1491 even if there is no documentation that specifically records a meeting between the very young Ludovico and the far more mature Matteo Maria, who died in 1494. A personal relationship did however exist between Boiardo and Ludovico’s father Niccolò. Ludovico picked up where  Boiardo had left off, in some sense competing with the novelty of Boiardo’s tale, given that Orlando is presented as not just ‘in love’ (something in itself unthinkable given the ‘wise’ image this paladin had) but ‘insane’ with love. The theme picked up from Boiardo is synthesised in stanzas V-IX of the first canto of the Furioso. As of stanza X Ariosto begins with his new invention, with Angelica’s flight from the Christian camp. In common with the Innamorato Ariosto’s romance has that it is written for the court and that it is intended to have an encomiastic function, which translates into an exaltation of Cardinal Ippolito and the House of Este, the utilisation of certain narrative threads like the war Agramante declares on Charlemagne and the love between Ruggiero and Bradamante’s brother, as well as the use of certain strategic characters such as Ranaldo/Rinaldo, Orlando’s cousin and Bradamante’s brother. The main diversity resides in Ariosto’s emancipation from Boiardo’s canzone, still tied to oral tradition, in his radical linguistic inversion, with the abandonment of elements typical of the style of the Po Valley in favour of a national language made recognisable thanks to Petrarch’s mediation, in his reformulation of the ottava rima and in the presence, unknown in Boiardo, of situations, events and characters drawn from contemporary reality.

Anonymous, Portrait of Matteo Maria Boiardo, engraving from Orlando Innamorato, Venice, 1553.