Like Ariosto's Orlando Furioso and Tasso's Jerusalem Delivered, Boiardo's chivalric stories of lords and ladies first entertained the culturally innovative court of Ferrara in the Italian Renaissance. Inventive, humorous, inexhaustible, the story...
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Like Ariosto's Orlando Furioso and Tasso's Jerusalem Delivered, Boiardo's chivalric stories of lords and ladies first entertained the culturally innovative court of Ferrara in the Italian Renaissance. Inventive, humorous, inexhaustible, the story recounts Orlando's love-stricken pursuit of "the fairest of her Sex, Angelica" (in Milton's terms) through a fairyland that combines the military valors of Charlemagne's knights and their famous horses with the enchantments of King Arthur's court.Today it seems more than ever appropriate to offer a new, unabridged edition of Boiardo's Orlando Innamorato, the first Renaissance epic about the common customs of, and the conflicts between, Christian Europe and Islam. Having extensively revised his earlier translation for general readers, Charles Ross has added headings and helpful summaries to Boiardo's cantos. Tenses have been regularized, and terms of gender and religion have been updated, but not so much as to block the reader's encounter with how Boiardo once viewed the world. Front cover -- Title page -- Copyright page -- Dedication -- Table of contents -- Preface to the Parlor Press Edition -- Acknowledgments -- Boiardo and His Poem -- Boiardo's Life -- Boiardo and the Derangement of Epic -- Angelica and the Fata Morgana: Boiardo's Allegory of Love -- Text and Translation -- Annotated Bibliography -- The Routes Taken by Orlando and Gradasso -- The Routes Taken by the Armies -- Book I -- Book II -- Book III -- Notes to the Poem -- Bibliography -- Index of Names and Places.
