Orlando Furioso

Orlando Furioso by Italian Renaissance poet Ludovico Ariosto is a highly influential chivalric romance originally published in 1532. Ariosto’s 46-canto poem details the life of Sir Roland, one of the heroes of Arthurian legend. Orlando Furioso is based on an earlier Italian work, Orlando Innamorato by Matteo Boiardo, and the French poem La Chanson de Roland, as well as other classic Arthurian tales (such as those written by Chretien de Troyes). As an epic poem, it also follows in the tradition of Homer’s Iliad and Virgil’s Aeneid. To the Arthurian canon, Ariosto introduced the character of Ruggiero, the mythic ancestor of the d’Este family of southern Italy, one of Ariosto’s patrons.   

This guide cites the prose translation by Guido Waldman, published by Oxford World’s Classics in 2008.

Plot Summary

The poem takes place during a war between the Christian Emperor Charlemagne of France and the Moorish King Agramant. Its main story follows the knight Orlando, one of the paladins of Charlemagne, goes mad as a result of love; however, there are also many other interwoven stories, and countless asides by the narrator.

While Agramant besieges Charlemagne in Paris, Orlando falls in love with the pagan princess

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