Ascoli 'Fier Pastor

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Renaissance Society of America

Ariosto and the "Fier Pastor": Form and History in Orlando FuriosoAuthor(s): Albert Russell AscoliSource: Renaissance Quarterly, Vol. 54, No. 2 (Summer, 2001), pp. 487-522Published by: The University of Chicago Press on behalf of the Renaissance Society ofAmericaStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3176785Accessed: 11/03/2010 00:54

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Ariosto nd the "Fier astor'FormandHistoryn OrlandoFuriosoby ALBERT RUSSELL ASCOLI

This essayexplorestheformal means (a variant of the medieval romancetechnique ofentrelacement)bywhichLudovicoAriostosOrlandoFuriosorepresentsnd commentsncon-temporaryvents,particularly he threatsposed byFrenchand Spanish nvasionsand bytheinterventionistpolitics of Popes ulius II and LeoX Ariosto's reatmentof the latterfigureexemplifiesboth the specificityof the interplaybetweenform and historyin the FuriosoInnamoratoand its innovative haracter ithrespectoprecursors,otablyBoiardo's rlandoInnamorato.Afinal section onsidershechanging ignificance fsuch topicalmaterialbetweenthefirst ditionof1516 (whenLeowasalive)andthefinaleditionof1532 (longafterLeosdeath,andunderverydiferenthistoricalircumstances).I. QUESTIONS

t has now been almost two decades since a wave of historical and culturalcriticism and theory reversed the dominant "textualist"trend in NorthAmerican literary studies that had led us from the New Criticism throughStructuralism and into the theoretical arcana of post-Structuralism. This

shift, true to its own historical character,has never been absolute or "pure."At its best, in fact, the imperative to "alwayshistoricize" has been comple-mented by a lingering textualist awareness of the complex and pervasivemediations that language and other forms of signifying representationmustbe accorded in any attempt to reestablish the bonds - referential,ideologi-cal, or other - between world and literarywork. And as the genealogical andmethodological links that still join the New Historicism and culturalcritiqueto their formalist precursorsand ancestors (New Criticism and Structural-ism) have become more apparent over time, the need to understand therelationshipbetween the form of a literarywork and its multiple historicitieshas become more and more pressing, though no less difficult to satisfy.In this essay I will consider a text, Ariosto's Orlandofurioso, that bene-fited immensely from the proliferation of sophisticated methods of formalanalysis in the 1960s and 1970s, precisely because its structure is so ex-tremely complex - its mode of signification so elaborate and, oftenenough, so oblique. At the same time, the Furiosodisplays its author's keenawarenessof the forms of culturaland political crisis that he individually, theFerraresesociety of which he was a part specifically,and the Italianpeninsulagenerally were each undergoing in the first third of the sixteenth century.The poem offers anachronistic fictions of chivalric heroism and errantdesireas a means of at least temporarily eluding and even forgetting imminent

RenaissanceQuarterly4 (2001):487-522 [487]


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ARIOSTOAND THE "FIERPASTOR"

ings - of episode, character,mage, phrase,and narrative echnique-fromavarietyof literary recursors.5otable,formypurposes, re he debtsto Boiardo'slong chivalric poem, Orlandoinnamorato;6 o Virgil's imperialepic,which furnishes he model for thedynastic ableof Bradamante ndRuggiero,andwhichcompetes ormallywith Boiardan omance orgenericdominancethroughout he poem;7andto Dante'sCommedia,s hich, de-spite its prominent role as a targetof Ariostanirony against theologicalsolutions o humanproblems,alsofunctionsas ahighlyproductivemodel ofapoemthatconfrontsand absorbshistorical risis.The second,andperhapsmosthighly developed,critical endency ocusesattentionon the "intratex-tual"questionof narrativetructure, ndspecificallyhepoem'sdeploymentof a variantof thepracticeof narrative ntrelacementdeveloped n thetradi-tion of medieval romance, that is, the simultaneous unfolding andjuxtapositionof multiplecharacters ndplots, interspersedwith autono-mous orsemi-autonomous"episodes."9he lasttrend,to whichI will turnbrieflyat theessay'snd,isreflected yagrowingbodyof criticismexploringthesignificance f thechangesntroducedbetween he firstand lasteditionsof the Furioso,ypicallycorrelatinghosechanges o dramatic hifts in so-cio-politicalconditionsbetween1516 and 1532.10Much of thebest recentcriticism n theFurioso as in factfocusedon itsproblematicelationshipo thecategory f romance neitheran"intertextual"oran"intratextual"ense,orboth,withspecialattention o thewaythatnar-rative tructuresgenerate ndcomplicate he processof poeticsignification.The problemhastypically eenexploredhrough worelatedopics: irst, hetensionbetweenwhat scalled heromancetendencyo aninconclusiveopen-nessand evasiveness f structure,n the onehand,and,on theother, heepicdrive o closure;"andecond, hetechniqueof narrativenterlace tself.12

5Rajna; arker;avitch,1984 and 1985; Ascoli,1987;Looney,1996;Martinez,1999.6Rajna;Bruscagli,1983; Quint, 1979; Marinelli; Baldan;Ross, 1989; Sangirardi;Cavallo,1998.7Fichter; itterson.8Blasucci;Ossola;Parker;egre; ohnson-Haddad; scoli,1987 and2000a;Biow;Mar-tinez 1999.90n romanceentrelacementgenerally,ee LotandVinaver.ForAriosto'srelationshipo

the tradition,see Delcorno-Branca,Bigi,and Beer,as well as Rajna'satalogueof romancesources. Forinfluentialdiscussionsof Ariosto'snarrativetechnique in relatedterms, seeCarne-Ross,1966 and 1976 (esp.164, 201) andDonato.Javitch,1984, hasrightlystressedthatOvid also offersa model forAriostannterlace.'?Caretti;Moretti,1977 and 1984;Saccone,1983;Casadei,1988b."Quint, 1979; Parker;Ceserani;Zatti, 1990;Casadei,1992.'Weaver;Javitch,1980 and 1988;Dalla Palma.

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RENAISSANCE QUARTERLY

Though both topics can be understood as "intratextual" eaturesof theFurioso, they have most often been explored in the "intertextual," liter-ary-historicalterms of Ariosto'srelationshipto his precursorBoiardo, whoseInnamoratowas left unfinished at its author's death in 1494, and which theFurioso ostensibly completes (although Ariosto - invidiously - nevermakes explicit referenceto his predecessor).13 een from the point of view ofromance entrelacement,Ariosto clearly imitates and even considerably elab-orates Boiardo'salreadyderivative narrativepraxis, a praxiswhich seems tobe most responsible for the effects of openness and endlessness that indeedcharacterizethe Innamoratoas it has come down to us.14On the other hand,Riccardo Bruscaglihas shown that while in Boiardo the knights move acrossthe landscape driven by an open-ended ventura(chance, happenstance), inAriosto, by contrast, they are motivated by goal-oriented inchieste(quests)that tend toward closure. Quint has subsequently extended this point by ar-guing that in the Furioso,Ariosto, especiallyover the last twelve cantos of thepoem, acts to impose an epic, neo-Virgilian conclusion on the romancestructurehe took over from Boiardo.

In the drive to characterize he connections and discontinuities betweenthe twopoemi in narrativeand generic terms, however,critics have tended tooverlook some of the most substantiveways in which both the form and thecontent of the Furiosodepart from the Innamorato.The first majorclaim ofthis essay is that the attempt to make narrative romance, epic, or bothdefinitional for the poetics of the Furioso,for all its usefulness, has not fullyand adequatelydescribed the formalspecificity and novelty of the Furioso,orits basic modes of signification, and in particularhas not understood the de-

'3Fewcriticshave takenthe Furiosos haracter s "sequel" uiteasliterallyasTorquatoTassowho, in his Discorsi ellArtePoetica111, 115-17, 120-21), insists hat the two Orlan-dos must be consideredormallyas a singleentity.14Quint, 979;cf. Carne-Ross, 976, 205;Sitterson.Cavallo,1998,argueswithconvic-tion and good evidence that Ariosto'srewriting(and suppression)of various Boiardan

episodes s designed o efface he signsthat the thirdbookof theInnamorato astending o-wardclosure.But Cavallo's oint,thoughanimportant orrectiveo dismissive reatments fBoiardo's rtistry, oes not canceltwo basic acts:1) that theInnamorato as never inishedand thus is necessarily xperiencedas "open"; nd2) that whatever onclusions he poemmighthave reached f its authorhadlived,theyare not foreseen rom the outset,nor inte-grated nto its structurethroughout,astheyare n theFurioso.HereAriosto's ecourse o theform of genealogicalpic(seeFichter), sagainstmitationof and/orallusion oVirgil,dearlyseparateshe Furiosorom tsprecursor.t isperhaps elevant o note that ustasAriosto endsto makeus forget heveryrealadvancesn theintegration f epicand romance arried utbyBoiardo, o Tasso'saterandmuchmorerigiduse of epicform- whichhe specifically p-posesto thehybridmonsterof BoiardoplusAriosto has tended o conceal he factthat,upto its own day,Furiosowasperhapsheclosestthingto Virgilian piceverwritten n thever-nacular.On Tasso'snvidious reatment fAriosto,seeFerguson; atti,1996.

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gree to which that specificity is both historicallyproduced and linked tightlyto historical content. In fact, notwithstanding the foregrounding of the Vir-gilian genealogical plot in the Furioso,especially at the beginning (canto 3)and the end (cantos 44-46), and the historical accident of the Innamorato'sunfinishedness, the later poem is more similar to the earlierpoem in its useof narrativeinterlace than it is different from it. Indeed, it has been recog-nized at least since Pio Rajna'sclassic 1900 study of the Furioso's fonti"thatBoiardo clearly excelled Ariosto in sheer narrativeinventiveness. Instead, Iargue, the most cogent differences, both formal and semantic, between thetwo are not primarilynarratological. In fact, the issue of narrativestructuremight best be placed under the largerrubric of figure and trope, specificallythe mastertrope of perspectivalirony with which the poem has been consis-tently associated, at least since DeSanctis and Croce.15In formal terms, the Furiosois significantly more complex than the In-namorato, largely because, in addition to the interweaving of narrativestrands and free standing episodes, Ariosto's interlace extends to include, asintegrallyconstitutive elements, a number of non-narrativestructures, mostnotably: 1) the authorial proems that invariably precede each canto andcomment on what has gone before and what comes after;16 ) the numerousother authorial digressions and interventions so well discussed by Durling;3) the major encomiastic and ekphrastic interludes in cantos 3, 26, 33, 42,46;174) the principal allegorical episodes (ofAlcina's island - cantos 6-8,10 - and the lunar surface- cantos 34-35), which participate in but alsogloss the surrounding narrative ines.18These featuresare either entirely ab-sent from Boiardo'spoem or not a continuous and integral part of it - inparticular,the use of proems for ethical, political, and/or social commentaryonly emerges in the latter part of the Innamorato.At the same time, the in-tertextual pattern of allusions to prior works in the Furioso is also morecomplicated and more systematic than it is in Boiardo.19As we shall see,Ariosto foregrounds verbaland thematic repetitions between all these inter-laced elements, intratextual and intertextual alike, to challenge and even toarrest the forward movement of plot and character.

5Cf.Zatti, 1990, 10-11 and n.)6Durling, 32-50;Ascoli, 1987, 97-98.17Seeorexample,Hoffman1992 and 1999.18Ascoli,1987, 123-24 and264-65.'9That s not to denya significant ntertextualdimension o the Innamorato,owever.On this scoresee, forexample,Cavallo,1993; Bruscagli,1995; Looney,1996;Nohrnberg,1998;Micocci;Gragnolati.

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The result is that one can legitimately trace interpretive paths throughthe poem in any of several ways: intratextually, by focusing on individualcharacters,20 r narrativeepisodes,21or images,22or themes;23 ntertextually,by focusing on the poem'scitations/transformationsof any one of severalma-jor precursors;24 istoricallyand culturally,by focusing on Ariosto'sencomiaof his Estensepatrons,his accounts of the Italianwars,25his variationson anyone of severalcultural discourses (the "querelledes femmes" for example).26Unfortunately, each structurally-sponsored shift in focus also drasticallyshifts the interpretiveresultsobtained, and the attempt to construct an inter-pretive calculus that could account for all possibilities, reducing multiplicityto unified significance, faltersbefore the excessive number of signifying vari-ables. Nonetheless, it is clear that isolating one structure or interpretivefocalpoint to the exclusion of others obscures the essentially interlacedcharacterof the poem, which incessantlyjuxtaposes its constitutive elements with oneanother and with the literarytexts and culturaldiscoursesto which they referin a volatile game of ironic perspectives.At the same time, it is also clear thatthe prominent historical-culture materials and their intricate positioningwith respect to literary narrative and themes are in some ways among themost distinctively innovative aspectsof Ariosto'stextual practice.In this ceaseless play between one piece of writing and another, as be-tween Ariosto's poem and the "social texts" that surround it, both the text/context distinction and the literature/historyopposition lose much of theirclarity.Within the Furioso,pieces of poem take turns as text and context forone another, while the numerous historical-cultural contexts evoked byAriosto's text, literary and historical alike, both determine its meaning andare recontextualized and reinterpreted by it. In short, neither a formalist,textual, approach that strives to reduce the poem to a closed system ofself-generating significances or anti-significances, nor a historical, contex-tual, analysis that attempts to find the work'smeaning by submitting it tothe determinations of external formations (literary, political, generally cul-tural, as may be), is sufficient to account for the Furioso'ssignifying practices.In order to approximate the incessant dynamic of reciprocal appropriationand ironization within the Furiosoand between the Furiosoand its external

20SeeWiggins.21SeeDallaPalma.22SeeGiamatti.23See accone,1974.24See avitch,1984 and 1985.25SeePampaloni;Murrin.26SeeDurling;Shemek;Finucci;Benson;Ascoli,1998.

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interlocutors and circumstances, we should recognize that Ariosto'sadapta-tion of romance interlace has explicitly broadened beyond narrative andtheme to encompass both literary "intertextuality"and cultural "discursiv-ity."27In other words, Ariosto both allusively interweaves macro- andmicro-textual elements of the romance-epic tradition28and, far more explic-itly, incorporates social and historical referencesand discourses within theinternal structuresof his poem.My second major point, then, is that the emergence of a new, complexand dynamic mode of interlacein the Furioso s closelycorrelatedwith equallystriking shifts in semantic content with respect to the Innamorato. Zatti,building on the work of Durling, has recentlysuggested that the primaryin-novations of Ariosto with respect to Boiardo are moments of poeticself-reflexivity,particularlyat the points of suture and transition from one nar-rativesegment to another.29He is, of course, right- a point my own work onthe multiple and contradictory figurations of poetry, poet, and readerin thepoem tends to support.3 On the other hand, I would like to stresshere thatthe Furioso is equally innovative in the way that it systematically introduceshistorical and cultural materials that link the world of the poem to the cir-cumstances of Estense Ferraraand of Italy in the throes of a dramatic crisismotivated by the foreign interventions (beginning with that of CharlesVIIIin 1494) and internecineviolence (with particularattention to the role of thepapacyunderJulius II [1503-1512] and then Leo X [1512-1521]).31

27Iuse"intertextuality"ere n a specificallyiterary-historicalense.Mynotion of"dis-cursivity" erives rom the workof MichelFoucault, sp. TheArcheologyfKnowledge, ithan assist romStephenGreenblatt's otion of Shakespeareannegotiations"ithinsocialdis-courses.The phenomenon I am describing s relatedto what I havepreviouslydubbed"cotextuality"Ascoli,1987, 45).28Javitch,985, convincingly howshowAriosto'smitativepractice ypicallyand delib-eratelybrings togetherat least two earliervariantsof a given episode.Nohrnberg, 1976;Quint, 1979; Parker; scoli, 1987;Zatti, 1990;Looney,1996;Javitch,1999- amongoth-ers- discusshow,fromthe first ine forward,he poem intentionallynterweaves omanceandepicelements.Cf. note 14 above29 Zatti, 1990, esp.chap.1.30 Ascoli, 1987, 37-39 et passim.31 On the presence f historicalmaterials,eeDurling;Pampaloni;Bigi;Moretti, 1984;Marsh;Baillet;Looney,1990-1991; LaMonica, 1992; Hoffman,1992 and 1999; Murrin;Biow;Henderson.In many ways,CarloDionisotti, 1961 and 1967, is the patronsaint ofcontemporarynterestn historicizingAriostoand hispoem.Casadei,1988b,offersanexcel-lent review of the literatureto that date in his carefulaccounting of the additions andrevisions f the materialbetween1516 and 1532. On the historical ircumstancesn Ferraraat the time of Ariosto,see Catalano;Bacchelli;Chiappini;Gundersheimer; estan; Beer;Casadei,1988b;LaMonica,1992.

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Although the two kinds of new materialmight seem to be antithetical-the one pointing towardpoetic ficticity,the other toward historicalreality-they areinsteadmutuallyconditioning and determining.The presenceof his-torical materialspoints up, by contrast, the fictions of poetic narrative.32 utthe more we notice the poem qua poem, the morewe will consider the realityof poetry itself as a historicallysituated mode of discourse.Furthermore,andthis point is crucial to my argument, both kinds of semantic novelties, poeticand historical, are closely intertwined with the formal innovations of thepoem, since they make their appearances primarily in the proems, digres-sions, and ekphrases. The last step to be taken, and my third major claimhere, is to suggest that the emergenceof importantnew structuraland seman-tic elements in the Furioso,brought together in Ariosto's expanded use oftraditional romance interlacetechniques, can be understoodat least in partasan effect of and/or a responseto the pressureof historical crises.

II. EXAMPLESTo illustrate these three central points (the innovative structure and seman-tics of the Furioso and their function as response to historical crisis), I willfocus on canto 17, which offers a particularly nterestingexampleof interlac-ing severaldifferent formal elements. Among these are two major narrativesegments (the tale of Rodomonte's devastating,Turnus-likeforay into Parisand the story of Grifone's ill-fated love for Orrigilleand its unhappy denoue-ment at the tournament of Norandino); the semi-autonomous episode ofNorandino, Lucina, and the Orco; a moralizing proem on the plight of Italysubjected to tyrantsand scourgedby foreigninvaders;and a digressiveautho-rial apostrophe to the Christian European princes, concluding withGiovanni de' Medici, that is, Pope Leo X.33As the last two items suggest, thisis a canto with a strong topical, historical-political interest, in addition to acomplex narrativestructure.Canto 17 is also, and very much to my purposes, one of the mostrichly Boiardan of all the Furioso. The tournament of Norandino recallsthe tournament of the King of Cyprus at which he, Norandino, battled forthe love of Lucina (Orlando innamorato2.19.52-55); the story of Grifoneand Orrigille continues a narrativebegun in the earlierpoem (2.3.62-65);the story of the Orco gives both the prequel and the sequel to the Boiardanstory of Lucina chained, Andromeda-like, to a seaside cliff and rescued by

32Cf.Durling,133-34;Bigi,43.33Quint, 1997, discusses he questionof interlacen this canto and those around t intermsdifferent rommine,thoughcomplementaryo them.

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Gradasso and Mandricardo (3.3.24-60).34 Most intriguing, from the per-spective of this study, is that while the narrative interlace of the stories ofthe Orco, Lucina, and Norandino with those of Grifone and Orrigille, aswell as of the monstrous Orrilo, is alreadyin place in the Innamorato,whatwe do not find there are the topically historical interpolations, nor the fur-ther juxtaposition of these tales with the siege of Paris. This last additionalso tends to "historicize" the material of romance by bringing it into con-tact with an epic world (on the one hand the Carolingian "matter ofFrance,"and on the other, the Virgilian poetry of imperial Rome) that em-braces the great sweep of military and political history.Let me begin a specific illustration of the differences between the Furi-oso and the Innamorato by juxtaposing two passages whose content isanalogous, but which, as we shall see, occupy very different positions struc-turally in their respective poems, and consequently establish very differentrelations to the historical world:

Butwhile I sing,redeemerGod [Iddioredentore], seeall Italyon fire,be-cause heseFrench sovaliant! come to laywastewho knowswhatland,soI will leave this hopelesslove of simmeringFiordespina.Some other time, ifGod permits, 'lltellyou allthere s to this.35

The stanza is the very last of the Innamorato. The pathos of this passagethat signals the poem's premature end derives from the clear sense that his-3Citationsof the Innamoratore o the 1995Bruscaglidition;English ranslationsf thepoemare rom he1989Ross dition.Ariosto,nfact, sbothborrowingnd ransformingmultiplelementsromBoiardocf.Rajna,66-88).Theamorousreacheryfthe ovely ndfraudulentrrigilleemainshesame,butwherenthe BoiardantoryOrlando as hebe-trayedover ndGrifoneheobject fOrrigille'sesire, owGrifone asbecome hevictim.The wayin whichAriosto'sGrifone s madebyOrrigille'srickeryo assume he disgraced r-morofMartanond husputhis ifeatrisknfact choes reciselyheepisodehat ntroducesOrrigillentheInnamorato2.19,esp.17and31).InBoiardo,orandinos aparticipantnatournament;nAriosto, e is thehost(Rajna,81)- inbothGrifonespresent. eeRoss,1998, oradetailedeadingftheBoiardanpisode. s or heOrco pisode,he ocalpointoftheBoiardanriginal,heexposurefanakedwomanothedangersfthesea nloose mita-tionof themyth fAndromedaecursnAriosto,ut tisdisplacednto heepisodefAngelicaexposed o a (feminine)Orcaandrescued yRuggiero nd Orlando. Thatepisode s, in turn,doubledytheadditionf theparallel limpia pisoden 1532.)Ariostoakes phints romBoiardoowrite heantefact fLucina'sangersavariationnOdysseus'sncounter ithPolyphemus: oiardo's rco hasno eyes,asagainst ne (3.3.28),andhe throwsamountainaf-terhis tormentors/victimsstheyescapeby sea(55-58). SeeRajna,282; cf. Baldan.Micocci,48-54, demonstrateshat Boiardo lready ad the Homericmodelclearlyn mind.35"Mentrehe io canto, o Iddioredentore, vedo la Italia uttaa fiamae a foco / perquestiGalli, che con granvalore vengon perdisertarnon so che loco; / perbvi lascio inquestovanoamore de Fiordespinardentea poco a poco;/ un'altraiata,se mi fiaconcesso/ racontarovil tuttoperespresso"3.9.26).

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torical events - the opening of the so-called "Italian crisis" with theinvasion of the peninsula by the French King, Charles VIII, in 1494 -have overtaken Boiardo and his poem in ways he did not anticipate andwhich he clearly found unbearable. Such events have no coherent relationwith the world of the poem, from which they have, until this decisivepoint of rupture, largely been excluded.36That is not to say that the In-namoratodoes not have a cultural role and hence a fundamentally political,or at least ideological, meaning, but rather that that role and that meaningreflect the relative stability and compactness of Ferrareseand Italian cul-ture in the later Quattrocento.37Consider by contrast the proem of Furioso,canto 17:

When oursinshavepassedbeyondthe limits of remission,God thejustof-ten givesreignto atrocious yrantsand to monsters endowingthem withthe force and the wit to do evil- in order o showthat his justice s equaltohis mercy.38A lengthy list of classicaltyrants is then presented, followed by the observa-tion that God also punished late-antique Italy in this way, but withbarbarian invaders rather than with home-grown monsters, invaders who"madethe earth fat with blood - [thus God] gave Italy in distant days inprey to the Huns and Lombards and Goths" (2.6-8). Finally, the poet ob-serves that the situation has not changed much in his own day, when theItalianpeninsula is afflicted bothby tyrantsand by foreigners:

Of thiswe have not only in ancient imes but in ourown clearproof,when tous, uselessand ill-born locks,he givesasguardians nragedwolves:to whom it seemsthattheirhunger s not greatenoughnortheirbelliescapa-ciousenoughfor suchmeat andso theycallwolveswith evenmoreravenousappetites rombeyondthe mountains o devourus....

Now God permits hat we should bepunishedby peoplesperhapsworsethanourselves n accountof ourmultiple,endless,nefarious, amnable rrors.

36Cf.Bigi,26 and40; Casadei,1988b,9-10.370n the culturalpoliticsof Boiardo'smilieu,see Bertoni;Chiappini;Gundersheimer;

Bruscagli, 983 and 1995;Tuohy;Campbell;Rambaldi;Cranston.38"I1 iustoDio, quando peccatinostri hanno di remissionpassato l segno,/ acci6chelagiustizia uadimostri ugualeallapieta,spessodaregno atiranniatrocissimi t amo-stri e da lor forzae di malfareingegno" 1.1-6). Unlessotherwisendicated, itationsof theFurioso reto the thirdeditionof 1532 (Ariosto1982).Translationsf theFurioso nd otherAriostanwritingsaremyown.

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A timewill comewhento despoil heir horeswewillgo, if everwe becomebet-ter and if their sins shouldreach hoselimits which movethe eternalGood towrath.(Emphasis dded)39

Though more obvious literaryprecursors han Boiardo for these lines arePe-trarch and Dante,40 Ariosto does clearly refer to the series of devastatinghistorical events, the Italianwars, set in motion by Charles's nvasion, whichby his time had far exceeded in horror anything Boiardo could have imag-ined twenty years earlier. Again like Boiardo, he invokes divine causality("Iddio redentore" matched by "IIgiusto Dio") to explain and, perhaps, toremedy those events.Despite the similarities in content, however,what are most striking arethe very different formal positions that this material has in the two poems.The terminal outburst of Boiardo hasonly one precedent in the Innamorato,which also comes at the end of a largetextual unit and presents itself as a for-mal rupture (2.31.49).41 By contrast, a relatively large number of Ariostanproems treat analogous topics, usually linking them very cosely to the spe-cific circumstances of Ferraraand the Este (e.g., 14.1-10; 15.1-2; 34.1-3).In short, Ariosto introduces structural means for representingwithin hispoem - in continuity with its fictions - the historicalviolence that threat-ens him, his city, his patrons. Such means are, by contrast, virtually absentfrom the Innamorato. In the particularcase under consideration, the poet's

39"Diquestoabbian non pur al tempo antiquo; ma ancoraal nostro,chiaroesperi-mento,/ quandoa noi,greggi nutilie malnati, ha datoperguardianupiarrabbiati:/ a cuinon parch'abbi bastar orfame, ch'abbi l lorventreacapir antacame; e chiamanlupidipii ingordebrame daboschioltramontani divorarne.. ./ Or Dio consenteche noi sianpuniti/ dapopulidanoi forsepeggiori, per i multiplicati t infiniti nostrinefandi,obbro-briosierrori. Tempoverra h'adepredaror liti / andremonoi, se maisarenmigliori, e chei peccati orgiunganoalsegno, chel'eternaBontamuovanoa sdegno" 3.5-8;4.1-4; 5.1-8).40Forexample:Petrarch,RimeSparse,anzone128, "Italiamia,bencheil parlar ia in-darno" seeesp. lines 39-41: "Or dentroa unagabbia fiereselvagge t mansuetegregges'annidan l chesempre l migliorgeme,"aswellas the iteratedmotif of foreign nvasionmetbythe inepitudeof Italianprinces); ndDante,Paradiso7 (seeesp.lines55-59: "Investedipastor upi rapaci siveggiondi quasu pertutti i paschi: o difesadi Dio, perchepurgiaci?/ Del sanguenostroCaorsini Guaschi s'apparecchiani bere."BehindDante,of course, sChrist'sndictment n the Sermonon theMountof falseprophetsas"wolves n sheep's oth-ing" (Matthew 7:15; cf. Jeremiah23:1). The relevanceof the anti-clerical train in theseprecursorextswillbecomeapparent swe proceed.41Thiss thepenultimate tanzaof book 2 andapparentlyefers o the warwithVenicein 1482. The firsteditionof the poemwaspublished n 1482 or 1483 (cf. Ross,1989, 14),andthethirdbook wasnot addeduntilsignificantlyaterandwasonlypublishedafter heau-thor'sdeath. In anycase,this earlierinterruption f poeticnarrative y military risissimplyconfirmsBoiardo's eluctanceo textualizehistorical iolence.On the importance f the Ve-netianmaterials orAriosto,seeSestan;Casadei,1988b;andLooney,1990-1991.

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reflections on his own time grow out of the characterRodomonte's destruc-tive rampage inside the walls of Carolingian Paris.Along with the adoptionof a formal mechanism to facilitate the textualization of violent historicalevents goes an "intertextual"recourse to literarytopoi and to specific textualmodels for representingsuch material. The phenomenon of internaltyrannyand externalinvasion is made familiarby placing it in a sequence of historicalexampleswell known from much humanist literature; he attempt to explainGod's apparentlyincomprehensible toleration of evil as a "divinescourge"isequally commonplace. More specifically, as just noted, the plea for divinemercy on behalf of ravagedItalygoes back to Petrarch's Italiamia, benche ilparlarsia indarno" (RimeSparse128), the canzone also cited by Machiavelliat the end of the Principein exhortation of the Medici princes (chapter26).We will soon see that the subsequent apostrophe to Leo X and companyblends elements from two Petrarchancanzoni and his Trionfodellafama, aswell as invoking a complex network of Dantean intertexts.The degree to which the proem drawsupon prior textual sources in therepresentationof historical materialalreadysuggests that Ariosto's confron-tation with history is heavily mediated and qualified, in a way that buffershim and his poem from the shock of direct, violent encounter that resonatesin the last stanza of the Innamorato.In the proem alone we find indicationsof a strong parodic motive, characteristicof what Pocock has called the Ma-chiavellian moment, that undercuts the theological politics of both Danteand Petrarch.Rather than imagining a divinely inspired political redeemerwho will restoreItaly to virtue and political stability,Ariosto simply foreseesa day when Italianswill get to take their historical turn asvicious scourgestothe foreign peoples who now devastate the Italic peninsula - violence be-gets reciprocalviolence in an endless spiralof unredeemabledevastation, ina vision far more cynical than Machiavelli's.42I now want to suggest how this complex processof acknowledging, tex-tualizing, and ironizing historical-political crisis is subsequently played outin the interlacedstructureof the canto, thus subordinating the movement ofAriostan narrativeto an allusivepolitical critique that gives specific shape-as it were, a local habitation and a name - to what the proem to canto 17states in the most generalterms.Alreadythe transition from narrative trandto narrativestrandis suggestive.At stanza 17, the narratorsaysthat he wantsto exchange the rageand death of the pagan Christian battles for somethingmore pleasant, a tale set in the Edenic city-garden of Damascus, which atfirst seems to be the anti-type of besieged Paris:

42This s not the onlyhistoricalproemwith a subversiveagenda.A suggestive xample,asDurling(140-44) notedsome timeago,is the proem o canto 14 (stanzas1-10).

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For God'ssake,myLord, et us cease o speakof wrathand to singof death... because he time has cometo return o whereI leftGrifone,havingarrivedat thegatesof Damascuswith Orrigilleand ... her lover[Martano].

Damascus s saidto be amongthe richestcities of the Levant,andamongthemostpopulousandmostornate.SevendaysdistanceromJerusalemtlies, na fruitful nd abundantplane,no lessjocund n the winter han in the summer.

Through hecitytwocrystalline ivers un,wateringan infinitenumberofgardens,which never ackeither lowersorfronds.43Before we know it, however, Grifone and company are listening to thestory-within-the-storyof the Orco'ssavagecannibalism.Shortlythereafter hefestive tournament of Norandino dissolves into a slaughtervirtually indistin-guishable from that taking place inside Paris,44when the Syrian kingmistakenlyattempts to punish Grifone for the pusillanimous behaviorof thetreacherous Martano (Orrigille's atest lover,whom she has passed off as herbrother to her feckless suitor), who had recently disgraced himself inDamascus while disguised in armor stolen from Grifone (17.116.8). Alreadyat the end of canto 16 the Ariostannarratorhad focused the reader's ttentionon the paradoxicalprocess by which the representationof inhuman destruc-tion gives rise to the pleasuresof poetic verse: "He hears the din, views thehorrible signs of cruelty, the human members scattered. No more now-come back another time, you who gladly listen to this lovely tale [istoria]."45In fact, the "bellaistoria" which in the proem to canto 17 comes to meanboth storyand history- does not departforlong from aviolence that overtlymimics the invasivenessof foreignarmiesmixed with the failureof leadershipthat we havejust been told characterizes he contemporaryItalianscene.The structuralcrux of canto 17, however, is the placement of the episodeof Norandino, Lucina, and the Orco between the proem and the narrator'slong digressionon the evils of warfareamong Christians that has led to Italy'spresent subjection. In this tale, Ariosto elaborates on his Boiardan intertextto create a knowing conflation of the Homeric Polyphemus with Jack-and-

43 "Ma asciam,perDio, Signore,ormai di parlar 'irae di cantardi morte; ... / chetempoe ritornar ov'io asciai Grifon,giuntoa Damasconsu leporte conOrrigille erfida,e conquello ch'adulterra,e non di lei fratello./ De le piuricche erredi Levante, de lepiupopolosee meglioornate si dice esserDamasco,che distante siedea Ierusalem ettegior-nate, in un pianofruttifero abondante, non mengiocondo l verno,che l'estate .. // Perlacittl duo fiumicristallini vanno naffiandoperdiversi ivi un numero nfinitodi giardini,/ non mai di fior,non maidi frondeprivi.. ."(17.1-2, 5-8; 18.1-6;19.1-4).

4Pampaloni,644-49; LaMonica, 1985, 330-31.45"Odel rumor,vedegli orribilsegni/ di crudelta,'umanemembra parte. Ora nonpiu:ritorniun'altra olta / chivoluntier abella storiaascolta"89.5-8).

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the-Beanstalk and the pastoral tradition.46 The ostensible purposes of thestory are,at one level, to justify the celebratorytournament of Norandino byrecounting how he and Lucina were finallyreunited and, at another,to com-plete one more of Boiardo's unfinished narratives as part of the project ofcontinuing and bringing to closure the Innamorato.But the episode has athoroughly overdeterminedplace in the Furiososeconomy of interlace,bear-ing significant relationshipto severaldifferent narrativeand thematic strandsof the poem. For instance, it clearlyconstitutes a diptych with the earlierep-isode of the monstrous female Orca devouring a series of naked femalevictims tied to a cliff. Furthermore, by making the Orco a shepherd whoplays pastoralditties on his "sambuca,"or "zampogna,"Ariosto locates himin a long line of peculiar poet-figureswho traverse he poem.47What I will highlight now, however, is the calculating way that the ep-isode echoes the political imagery of the proem and also anticipates thelater authorial digression, forming a kind of fictional bridge between thetwo moments when contemporary history intrudes into the canto. TheOrco as "blind monster [mostro cieco]" (33) recalls the "atrocioustyrantsand ... monsters" (1) to whom God periodically gives reign. Moreover,since this monster is also a shepherd, a "pastor" 32.8, 34.6, 47.8, 54.6), heenters into the metaphorics of pastoral care that were used to characterizethe failed leadership of contemporary Italy (3.5-8). In other words, the po-litical violence which Ariosto sees ravagingthe historical world, and whichhe repeatedly describes as a cannibalistic devouring of human flesh andblood (2, 4), is surprisingly echoed by the Orco who feasts on the flesh ofNorandino's men (35).The political significanceof the Orco'scannibalism is given furtherstressby a verbalecho from one of Dante's most terrifyingdepictions of the spiri-tual consequences of the civil wars ravaging the Italian peninsula and theindividual cities within it in his own day: the vision of the deposed Pisanleader,Count Ugolino, gnawing awayat the skullof his arch-enemyRuggieri,Archbishop of Pisa, in Infernocantos 32 and 33. Emilio Bigi, in his excellentcommentary on the Furioso,notes that the versewhich describes Norandinoreturning to the cave to be near the hapless Lucina after his own Odys-seus-likeescape is a transformationof a famous line which hints that Ugolinomay have devoured his own children: Ariosto's "pote la pieta piu che '1timore" (devotion did more than fear;48.5) clearlyechoes Dante's"piuche '1dolor, pote il digiuno" (hunger did more than sorrow;Inferno33.75). Takentogether with the proem, these echoes could be said to constitute nothing

46Rajna,82-84; Baldan,29 et passim;Micocci,48-54.4717.35.8and 17.47.5-8. Cf.Ascoli, 1987, 392 andn. 228.

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more than a lingering memory of historical violence in the poem, with the ad-ditional, and non-trivial, irony that the Orco, whose solicitousness towardhisflock is what permits Norandino's escape, and who "maifemina ... non di-vora" (never eats women; 40.8), is considerably more discriminating andcivilized than the monsters and "enragedwolves"running amok in Italy.Thatthe episode has a more precise, and scandalous, political meaning, however,becomes apparentin the next formal segment of the canto.As the narratorcoses this episode and turns back to Norandino reestab-lished in Damascus, he almost immediately enters into a lengthy topicaldigression, occasioned by the observation that the Syrian Moslems werearmed like the European Christians:

The Syriansn thosedayshadthe customof arming hemselvesn the fash-ion of the West.Perhapsheywere edto it by thecontinuousproximityof theFrench,who thenruled heholyplacewhereomnipotentGod lived n the flesh- and which nowtheproudand miserableChristians,o theireverlasting is-credit, eave n the handsof [pagan]dogs.48This indictment then gives way to a tirade against internecine Christianconflicts and particularly the wars, led by the Spanish and French, whichhave subjugated and humiliated Italy:

If you want to be called "MostChristian" ndyou others"MostCatholic,"whydo you kill themen of Christ?whyaretheydespoiledof theirgoods?Whydo you not take backJerusalem,which was takenfromyou by renegades?Areyou, Spain,not nearto Africa,which hasoffendedyou far more thanthisItaly?Andyet, to increase hepoorwretch'sravail, ouabandonyourfirst,

so lovely,enterprise.O stinkingbilge,fullof everyvice,you sleep,drunkard t-aly- and does it not weigh on you that, once servedby this peopleand bythat,you arenow theirhandmaiden?49

48"Sorianinquel empo veano sanza d'armarsiquestauisadiPonente. Forseegli nduceaa vicinanzachede'Franceschiveanontinuamente,chequivi llor eggeanasacratanza dove ncarne bitbDioonnipotente;ch'orasuperbi miseri ristiani,conbiasimior, asciannmande'cani"17.73.1-8).49"Se ristianissimisser oivolete, e voi altriCatolici omati, perche i Cristo liuominiuccidete?perche e'beni or sondispogliati?Percheerusalemonriavete chetoltoe statoa voi darinegati?... / Non haitu,Spagna,'Africaicina, chet'haviapiudiquestatalia ffesa? Epur,perdar ravagliollameschina,lasci aprimauasl bella m-presa. O d'ogni izio etidaentina,dormi, taliambriaca,nontipesa ch'ora iquestagente, radiquella chegiaservai fu,seifatta ncella?"75.1-6; 6.1-8).

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This attack on the internecine warfare of European Christians, with its callfor a reconciling Crusadeagainstthe paganOther, has, again, an obvious Pe-trarchanprecedent, and perhapsa Dantean intertext as well.50The digression culminates in an apostrophe, both monitory and horta-tory, to Pope Leo X, during whose papacy both the first (1516) and second(1521) editions of the Furiosoappeared,and whose imprimatur authorizedits publication.51 The narrator addresses Leo as the one leader who couldboth protect the Italianpeninsula againsther neighbors and, presumably,re-direct European energies into a new Crusade:

You,greatLeo[granLeone=Lion], n whompressesheheavyburdenof thekeysto heaven do not allowItalyto be swallowedup in sleep,if you haveyourhands n herhair.YouareShepherd; ndGod hasgivenyou that staff tocarryand haschosenthat fiercename,so thatyoumightroar, ndraiseupyourarms, n order o defendyourflock fromwolves.5250The ast two lines of stanza73, and first fourof stanza75, clearlyderive from Pe-trarch'sTrionfoellaFama,2.137-44:"poiveniasolo il buon duce Goffrido che fe'l'impresasantae'passigiusti. Questo(dich'iomisdegnoe indarnogrido) feceinJerusalemollesue

mani / il malguardato gianeglettonido;/ gite superbi,o miseriCristiani, consumandol'un l'altro,e non vi caglia che '1sepolcrodi Cristoe in mandeicani."Note especiallyhecannabalisticmotifin the Petrarchanoriginal "consumando'unl'altro")hatsuggests n as-sociative link to the Orco episode. The passage, incidentally, may well have been aninspiration or Tasso'smagnum pus,Gerusalemmeiberata.Alsorelevant,however, retheselinesspokenby the falsecounselor,Guido daMontefeltro,n Dante's nferno 7.85-90: "Loprinciped'i noviFarisei, avendopresoguerrapressoa Laterano, e non con Saracinne conGiudei,/ che ciascunsuo nemicoeracristiano e nessunerastatoa vincerAcri/ ne merca-tante in terradi Soldano."The Danteanconnectionbecomes more evident whenAriostobrings he papacy nto thepictureat stanza79, andwith it additional choesof the Comme-dia. See also note40 above.51Leo's icenseto publish s givenin a prefatoryetter o the 1516 editionsignedbythehumanistJacopoSadoletoand dated27 March1516.Thatletter n turnwas basedon a ver-sion draftedby Ariosto's riendPietroBembo,dated20 June 1515. The licensewas thenrenewed n 1521. The licensesare described n AgnelliandRavegnani,1:17-21. Catalanogivesthe background1: 428) andreprintsBembo'setter(document256, in 2: 149-50). Iam indebted o DennisLooney orbringing hisinformation o myattentionandforanum-ber of otherusefulsuggestionshathavemadeasignificantmpacton thisessay.

52"Tu,ranLeone,acuipremon e terga dele chiavidel cielle gravi ome, nonlasciarche nel sonno si sommerga Italia, e la manl'hai ne le chiome./ Tu seiPastore; Dio t'haquellaverga dataaportare, scelto l fieronome,/ perche u ruggi,e chele bracciatenda,slche dailupi il gregge uo difenda"79.1-8).Theres anotherPetrarchanchohere, his timefromRimeSparse3.10-14, 19-23:"Ches'aspetti onso,neches'agogni Italia, he suoiguainon parche senta, vecchiaoziosae lenta; dormiraempre t non fia chi lasvegli? Le manl'avess'io volto entro'capegli ... / ma non senzadestinoa le tuebraccia chescuoter orteetsollevaraponno/ e orcommessonostrocapoRoma. Ponman inquellavenerabilhioma/ securamente,t ne le trecce parte, l chelaneghittosa scadalfango."As we shallsee,how-

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Leo is explicitly treated as a potential force for good, a pastoralprotector ofsheep from ravening beasts, a presumed antidote to the "enragedwolves"who now guardthe "uselessand ill-born flocks"of Italy. Curiously,however,this apostrophe is immediately preceded by a reference to the Donation ofConstantine, the spuriousdocument by which the EmperorConstantine hadallegedly ceded political jurisdiction over the Western Empire to the bishopof Rome (78.3-4). The point explicitly made is that the Germans and otherravagersof Italy should seek Roman wealth in the East, where Constantinemoved it at the transferof imperialwealth from Rome to the EasternEmpire.Nonetheless, we can hardly miss the allusive reference to the long-standingcritiqueof the papalusurpationand abuse of secularauthority,which was de-veloped by Dante (especially Inferno 19.90-117 and 27.85-111; Paradiso27.40-66), Petrarch(Libersine nomine),Valla (Defalsa et ementita donationeConstantini),and even Ariosto, elsewhere in the Furioso(34.80). Such a cri-tique, it need hardly be said, was now more pressing than ever, in theimmediate aftermathof AlexanderVI's nepotistic imperialism (1492-1503)and JuliusII'sadventurism,and on the eve of the Lutheran Reform.What we may also notice, simply from readingthrough the passagejustcited, is that it contains a subterranean yet distinctive thematic, and evenverbal, connection to the Orco episode with which it is so closely juxta-posed by the magic of Ariostan interlace. That juxtaposition brings with itan irony that reverses the basically hopeful thrust of the passage, turningLeo from potential solution into part of the problem delineated both in thedigression and in the proem before it: "You are Shepherd; and God hasgiven you that staff to carry and has chosen that fierce name." Like theOrco, Leo is a shepherd with a capacity for bestial ferocity. In retrospect,the reference to the Pope's role as keeper of the "keys of heaven" connectswith the pastoralOrco who "opened and closed [aprivae tenea chiuso]" thesheepfold (34.7). Both images derive from the passagein Matthew in whichJesus was traditionally said to have conferred papal powers on Peter: "thouart Peter and upon this rock I will build my church. And the gates of Hellwill not prevail against it. And I will give thee the keys of... heaven. Andwhatsoever thou shalt bind upon earth, it shall be bound also in heaven:and whatsoever thou shalt loose on the earth, it shall be loosed also inheaven" (16: 18-19). The two principal tropes of the passage (of the keysand of loosing and binding) were often conflated in a composite figure oflocking and opening, as in this passagefrom Dante's Purgatorio(the speakerever,Dante is a farstrongerpresence note the echoesof the passages itedpreviouslynnotes40 and 50 above,both of whichspecificallyink Italy'spredicamento the failuresofthe papacy, sthe Petrarch oesnot, at least n the two canzoniechoedbyAriosto.

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is an angel): "I hold these [two keys] from Peter,who told me that I shoulderr rather in opening [the gate] than in keeping it locked."53Even more toour point, the passagewas regularlyinvoked to suggest the abuseby popesof their sacred office, particularly for purposes of simonistic profiteering(e.g., Inferno 19.97-105) and, notably, of waging war against fellow Chris-tians: "It was not our intention that on the right hand of our successor apart of the Christian people should sit, while the others sit on the otherside, nor that the keys which were given to me should become the device ona battle-standard raisedagainst baptized souls."54

All of these potentially subversive elements were in place in the first,1516, edition of the Furioso,when what we are calling canto 17 was in factcanto 15. For the 1521 edition, Ariosto made a small but crucial revision tohis text, which brought out the full force of the equation between the Orcoand the Pope. To the first allusive reference linking the Orco to Dante'sUgolino and Ruggieri, he added a second (not noted by Bigi) in the preced-ing stanza. In 1516, stanza47, line 8, reads:"the horribleshepherd [orribilepastor]who follows behind them" (1960, 508). In 1521 it has become: "thefierceshepherd [fierpastor]who came along behind them." The phrase"fierpastor"recallsUgolino's first, explicitly cannibalistic, appearance:"la boccasollevb dalfiero pasto" (he raised his mouth from the fierce meal; Inferno33.1; emphasis added). The change rendersplain the thematic connectionthat motivated the original allusion by restoringthe motif of bestial hungerexcised in the shift from Dante's "piuche '1dolor, pote il digiuno" to Ario-sto's "pote la pieta piu che '1timore." The shift from "pasto"to "pastor"brings with it a calculated comic irony, at once focussing attention on theOrco's cannibalism and on the fact that the monster actually is - as far ashis sheep are concerned - a "good shepherd."The force of the added phrase, however, is not confined to its signifi-cance within the confines of the Orco episode proper: it has a broaderintratextualresonanceaswell, one which will become obvious if we consideragain the apostrophe to Leo: "Youare Shepherd [Tu sei Pastore];and Godhas given you that staff to carry and has chosen that fierce name [fieronome], so that you might roar [perchetu ruggi], and raiseup your arms, inorder to defend your flock from wolves." Separatedby a single line we findthe two constituent elements of the Orcan epithet, "fierpastor [fierceshep-

53""Daier e tegno;e dissemich'i'erri anziadaprir h'a enerla errata"9.127-28).54"Nonu nostra ntenzione h'adestramano d'i nostrisuccessori arte edesse, partedal'altradelpopolcristiano; ne chele chiavichemi fuorconcesse, divenisserignaculonvessillo che contrabattezzati ombattesse"Paradiso7.46-51;cf. Inferno 7.100-5).

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herd]."5The furtherelement of a roaring "percheu ruggi"[sothatyoumay roar;79.7]) mayevoke Dante's treacherous cclesiastic,Ruggierinow castas Leo's piritual ncestor.56he Popewithananimal's ame sthusgrotesquelymetamorphosednto analter-ego f the monstrousOrco. In hiscase,however, he ironyof the allusion s singleanddevastating:wheretheOrco is bothshepherd"pastor")nd cannibal("pasto"), eo,it wouldseem,is a "pastor"urnedcannibal,a raveningwolf in shepherd'slothing.This procedure f ironicqualificationhroughAriosto'samplified,his-toricizingadaptation f romance nterlaces thencomicallyconfirmed aterin the cantowhen, in the narrative f Norandino'sdisastrous rror,Orrig-ille's over,Martano,encased n the armor romGrifone, s described romthe first editionon as "he who put on a pelt not his own, like the jackassonce didthat of thelion."57 he imagenot onlytakesus backto Norandinoandcompanyescaping rom the Orco, la Homer,wrapped n goatskins("ilnon suo cuoio")and slatheredn ovinegrease,but also,evidently, on-jures he leonine,thatis asinine,Leoaswell.58Dante'snightmare-made-realf eucharisticommunity urned o canni-balistic,neo-Thebancivilwar, n Pisa,Florence,and the Italianpeninsulagenerally,s characteristicallyocusedin the Commedia n the strugglebe-tweenGuelfandGhibelline, cclesiasticalndsecularpowers, s it clearlysinInferno 7, 32, and33. It is indeedout of thistradition hat both theproemandtheAriostandigression f canto17emerge,with theadditionalpathosoftheirprescientprolepsisof the conflicts between the Catholic churchandProtestant ects.The fantastic arrative f theFurioso,sfilteredthrough hecomplexevolutionsofAriostannterlace,husbecome he vehicleof anindi-

55The descriptionof Leoin these termswaspresent rom the firstedition,raising hequestionof whetherAriostowasalready t thatstageobliquelyechoing,consciouslyor not,Inferno 3.1. The question,of course,cannot be answereddefinitively.But the insertionofthe locution"fierpastor"n 1521, with its evidentconnectionboth to the Danteanecho instanza48 andto thedescription f Leoin stanza79, surelymeans hatby 1521 the poethadrecognizednot onlythe possibleallusion,but its full,violentlyanti-papal, mplications.56 In anearliermartialproem,Ariostospeaksof Ippolito's efeatof anotherroaringion,Venice:"quando lLeone,n martanto feroce ... / faceste l, ch'ancorruggier'oda" 15.2;emphasisadded).As is oftennoted,thepapacyand theVenetiansweretheprimaryhreats oFerrareseecurityn bothAriosto's ime andBoiardo's,he twojoiningforcesat the battleofRavenna.See note 41 above.57"Coluih'indosso l non suocuoio, / comel'asinogiaqueldel leone"1.1-2;emphasisadded).

5The laterepisode s dottedwith images hatreinforce connectionto the earlierpartof the canto- for example,Martano s twice linked with "lupi" 88.8; 91.3), whiletwo ofthe "extras"n the tournamenthavenamespointedlyderived romthe pastoral radition:"Tirse Corimbo" 96.3).

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rect, shelteredcommentary not only on the general political crisisof the day,but also on the specific complicity of the papacyin that crisis.Along with thepublic crises in Italy and Ferrara,of course, these passages may reflecta mo-tive of personal revenge against the Pope, from whom Ariosto had expectedbut not receivedpatronage,a point to which I will returnshortly.59In political and militaryterms,Leo could become forAriosto, and his Es-tense masters,a convenient focal point for a collection of problems in whichhe was complicitous, even though he could rarelybe given exclusive blame forthem. In the years leading from 1494 to the publication of the first Furioso n1516 the paradeof foreignintruders French,Spanish,and imperial- hadcontinued unabated. The yearsof JuliusII'spapacyhad been especiallydan-gerous for Ferrara.The Estense state was set precariouslynear the point ofencounter between the shifting macro-forcesof France,Spain, the Emperor,Venice, Milan, and the papacy,and its territorieswere divided between thosewith traditional feudal attachments to the papacy (Ferrara tself and to theEmpire (Reggio and Modena). This season of the Italian warsculminated inthe bloody battle of Ravenna in 1512, which pitted France and FerraraagainstJulius, the Venetians,and the Spanishand which, despite victory,leftthe Estense shaken.60 n addition, Julius had been responsible for deprivingthe Este of two of their most cherished territorial holdings, Reggio andModena, in 1510, and had repeatedlythreatenedto depose them from theirruleover the papalfiefdom of Ferrara, s he had earlierdone to the Montefel-tro in Urbino. In the years leading up to 1516, the memory of these lossesand threats, with which Giovanni de' Medici had been associated as papallegate in Bologna during the last yearsof Julius'sreign, were still fresh.Theywere made more vivid still by Leo'sbad faith in failing to restoreModena andReggio to Este control despite promisesto do so. The Medici Pope'sown di-rect attempts to unseat the Este would not come until 1519.61It may well bethat the outbreakof open hostilities at that point at least partlyaccounts forthe insertion of the key locution "fierpastor" n the 1521 edition.

5CatalanodiscussesAriosto's elationshipwithLeo atlength(vol. 1, esp. pages352-87)andgives particular rominence o the Pope'sailure o providepatronage354-57, 385-87,476). Ariostodiscusseshis disappointmentn Satire3, esp.lines 82-105, 151-206, and7lines55-69 and88-114, while Satire , esp. ines1-9, 58-96, 196-234,and Satire , esp. ines79-102, containanti-clerical nd anti-Medicean iatribes.See also note 64 below. On Ari-osto'sattitude oward he clergy n general, eeDionisotti, 1967;andMayer.60Ariostomakesrepeatedreference o this battle, notablyin the proemto canto 15(1-10), aswellas at3.55 and33.40-41. The battleand its effectson thepeninsula s a wholearememorably ecountedbyFrancescoGuicciardinin books10and11of theStoriad'Italia.61Forthe impactof the Modena/Reggioquestionon Ariosto's elationshipo Leo,seeCatalano,vol. 1, pages387, 478, 490, 501, 533-34.

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Though the proem and digression avoid local Ferrareseand Estenseconcerns (which are taken up elsewhere, at a safe remove from referencestoLeo), they certainly constitute an overt recognition that what for Boiardohad appeared to be an apocalyptic disruption of social and political nor-malcy in the Italian peninsula, for Ariosto and his generation had itselfbecome the norm, a fact that Ariosto is able to confront in representable,and hence tolerable, form within the body of his text, as his predecessor ap-parently could not.62But Ariosto'spolitically charged use of interlace takesthe poem's relation to its historical circumstances a step further- allowinga corrosive, structurallydetermined irony to play over the poet's apparentlypious celebration of patronsand potentates, creatingat least the illusion thatthe poem affordeda refuge and a point of vantage from which history couldbe viewed, interpreted, and contingently mastered. At the same time, thevery evasiveness and indirectness of Ariosto'spolitical critique - which hewillingly offers under cover of its opposite, namely a courtly encomium ofthose most to blame for Italy's lls - suggests just how precarious, ineffica-cious, and fundamentally illusory such mastery reallyis.This point might be less compelling if the viciously ironic textualiza-tion of Leo X through his symbolic name in canto 17 should somehowprove to be an isolated incident in both the Furioso and the period as awhole. It is clearly not, however. Charles Stinger, among others, has shownthe positive typological-symbolic valences that were attached to papalnames in official documents and through public displays of the iconogra-phy of power.63 n the Satires,Ariosto explicitly vents his feelings about Leoand the Church in terms close to those of canto 17, though far more ex-plicit,64 and in the Furioso itself the ekphrastic allegory of Avarice andLiberalityin canto 26 clearlydraws on the motifs of canto 17 to turn an ap-parent encomium of Leo into another allusive, structurally implied,indictment, directed specifically against the decidedly illiberal Pope, who

62Cf.Durling,134.63Stinger,1-92. Machiavelli'sox-lionsymbolismderived romDante and Cicero inThePrince,chapter18, also concealsa veiled andhighlyambivalent eference o Leo,fromwhomhe, too, vainlysought iberatingpatronageAscoli,1993, esp.242-45). Ariostowouldlaterpick up the Machiavellianimage in attackingthe tyrannicalrule of Leo'snephew,Lorenzo,Duke of Urbino,the dedicateeof ThePrince Satire .94-102, cf. 7-12). Foraddi-tionaldiscussionofAriostoandMachiavelli,eeAscoli,2000b.64Satire indictsallprelates, rompriest o pope,of ambitionandavarice, imonyandnepotism. Lines205 and following depict a generic pope who will "triumph, ilthy withChristianblood"(222) and ispreparedo "give taly n prey o France rSpain" 223) recall-

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failed to provide the poet Ariosto with patronage at a time when he desper-ately felt the need for it.65The issue of patronage brings us to the crucial point that Leo is not theonly historical figure textualized in this way, nor likely the most importantfrom Ariosto's perspective. Leo'spatronagehad seemed especially crucial toAriosto in 1513 because his patron of record at that time was Cardinal Ip-polito d'Este, in whose service he remained until the Cardinal'sdeparturefor Hungary in 1517. Ippolito is the man to whom the Furioso s ostensiblyaddressed and the object of its most fulsome and central encomia, most no-tably in cantos 3 and 46. However, Ippolito's failings as a patron, and inparticular his inability to appreciate or adequately rewardAriosto's artistictalents are the explicit subject of Satire 1 and of at least one embittered let-ter,66as well as of biographical legend. In Ariostos BitterHarmony,I arguedthat Ariosto's treatment of Ippolito is subject to systematic subversion

ing Furioso 7.3-5, 73-79. Forpastoralmetaphoricsinkedto Leo in onewayoranother, ee3.115-12; 4.7-12. Forcomparable nimalimagery,ee2.2-3; 5.25;7.49-54, 93. ForplaysonLeo'sname,see3.97; 4.9, 154-56;7.88-93. See alsonote 59 above.The Satireswerenot in-tendedfor immediatepublicationand hencewere rankern theircriticismshan the Furioso.See Portner or the idea (not entirelypersuasive)hat Ariosto'sNegromante as not per-formedin RomebecauseLeosawin it an unflattering llusion o himself.On Leo'spositivereaction o a Romanperformance f Ariosto'sSuppositind to the Negromantepisode,seeCatalano,vol. 1, 376-85.

65In heallegoricalntaglioofcanto26,Avarice, ersonified sachimerical east ombin-ing featuresof ass,wolf, lion, and fox, is depicted ravaging he world. Also depictedareEuropean ulers rom theearlyCinquecento, ncludingLeo,whoslaythe monsterwiththeirliberality34.6; 36.1). The languagen whichLeois presented, owever,dentifieshimwiththe beasthe ostensiblyopposes.The worstdepredations f the beastareamong"cardinalipapi"and have"contaminatedhelovelyseatof Peter"32.6-8). Inlanguageike that associ-ated with PopeandOrcin canto 17, the beastarrogates thekeys... of heavenand of theabyss" 33.7-8). The beast s part ion, while Leoappears epictedallegoricallyshis bestialnamesake.Twoof theother hreeanimalshatconstituteAvarice,hewolfandtheass,alsoap-pearin canto 17. The intagliodepictsLeo in the curiousact of biting the ass-earsof themonster 36.2). Inthe first,1516, redactionhe image s madeevenmorecuriousbythe am-biguous anguagen which t is described: avea ttaccate'asinine recchie"1960,878). Since"attaccate"an mean"attached"swell as"attacked,"e are ree o see the ass-ears n Leoasmuch ason Avaricecf. 17.112.2:"come'asinogiaqueldelleone"),withapossibleallusionothe OvidianMidas, hemythicalparadigm f avaricewithill-concealedss-ears ho, inciden-tally, s a verypoor judgeof art(Metamorphoses1.146-93). For a readingof the allegoricalintaglio n lightof its "entrelacement"ith the restof canto26, seeHoffman,1999.Forotherexamplesof suchbivalentgrammaticalonstructionsn the poem,seeAscoli,1987, 355-56andn., 359-60 andn. 172.

6Letterno. 26 in Ariosto1965. CatalanodocumentsAriosto's elationshipo Ippolitoextensively;eeesp.vol. 1, pp. 434-54.

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throughout the Furioso,67and in particular that the etymological, andmythological, resonances of his classicizing name are, like Leo's, made intoa key structuring principle of the poem.68 I hope that the strong evidencethat analogous procedures are at work in canto 17 vis-a-vis Leo will lendfurther credence to a case - Ippolito's- that was at the center of Ariosto'sworld at the time of the poem's first publication, and hence was even morecarefully relegated to the occulted byways of ironic interlace, than the onethat concerns me here.

Let us now return to the question of narrative tructurewith which I be-gan. If Orlandofirioso does indeed make a turn away from the openness ofromanceto the closureof epic - and in so doing identify itself and its authorclosely with the ideological values and political interests of the Este court -nonetheless, the voice of resistanceand of critique, oscillating between per-sonal ressentiment nd acute political analysis, still persists.We can locate itspecifically at the points of juncture and fracture between the disparateele-ments of history and fiction, narrativeand commentary, story and figure,that the poet weaves together into a mobile web of shifting and reciprocallyqualifying perspectives.Though it is easy enough to say that such an enter-prise ultimately serves the master discourse of courtly ideology, it is alsoworth noting that no more directcriticism was possible, at leastnot in a formthat commanded a significant readership.Ariosto could not have openly at-tacked the man upon whom he, and through him a largenumber of brothersand sisters,depended for their livelihood, a man who was known for his im-petuous recourse to violent methods - no more than he could indict Leoopenly in a poem destined for wide circulation in the Italian courts andwhich, as noted earlier,requiredand bore Leo'simprimatur for publication.In other words, forAriosto and his contemporaries t was a choice between anocculted, and perhaps therefore unhearable irony, and "the silence of thelambs,"to take our poet'spastoralmotif one, unpleasant,step further.

III. CONCLUSIONSAs suggested near the beginning of this essay,Ariosto extends the Boiardanpractice of narrativeentrelacemento include and to foreground non-narra-

7Cf.Quint, 1983, 88-89; Zatti, 1990, 147-49;Looney,1990-1991. Durling(135-50)arguesfor the seriousnessof the encomia, though with important qualifications;Bailletmakesa lesssubte case forthis position.68The ymbolically harged mageryof "cavalleria"ndhorsemanshipGiamatti;DallaPalma) s subtendedby the classicalmythof Hippolytus,with its thematicsof blind desireand madviolence(Ascoli, 1987, 382-89). Ariosto'sprocedure f fusingclassicalmythsandcontemporary ersonswiththe poem's haracterss described n Ceserani 485).

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tive formal elements. Among other things, this technique permits thesuggestive juxtaposition of Ariosto's chivalric fictions with the world of con-temporary history, whose materials enter the poem through poems,ekphrases, prophecies, and other "asides."These juxtapositions are often notsimply formal. That is, the proems often make explicit a moralizing analogybetween the narrativesof the poem and some contemporary issue of note.Usually,however,what is made explicit is culturallynormative or positive, inthe sense that the views expressedare compatible with those of a dominantculture, not that they are always or even mostly couched in the affirmativemode. Culturally negative or subversiveoutcomes are,on the whole, left im-plicit - at the level of structure. Attacks on patrons, or on figures ofunassailableprestige, such as the Pope, can only be deduced by an active in-terpretationof ostentatious formal features- such as those discussedabove.Ariosto in this way can have his cake (the patronage and cultural prestigethat a poem celebrating chivalric values and Estense genealogy affords)andconsume it too (in its implied critique of those values and that regime).Becausethe activityof critiqueis largelypresentin the form of structuralpossibility,and not as explicit utterance, it is alwayspossible to doubt its ex-istence as a product of authorial intention. And yet many of the formalfeatures of the Furioso, including those just mentioned, seem gratuitous ifsuch a critical counter-narrative s not being deployed through them. None-theless, though I would insist that these featuresdo, in effect, insistenty invitethe sort of speculative reading that I have given to them, I would also arguethat they cannot be treated as keys to a straightforward political allegory.Their interpretation is very much open to the judgment of an individualreader whether of Ariosto'stime or our own - and is thus ambiguous bynature. For example, the limited frameworkof this analysisofferstwo sets ofpolar oppositions through which to evaluate significance that would allowdifferent interpreters o arriveat very differentconclusions. One might stressthe statusof canto 17 as a serious interrogationof the causesand curesof po-litical crisis,or one might insist on the personaland venal vendettaof Ariostoagainstthe Pope who failed to makegood on promised patronage.We mightseeAriosto'srecourse o oblique and allusivetechniquesof political-socialcrit-icism as a cunningly subversivestrategy,calculatedto undermine the powersthat be - or we could see it insteadas a failureof nerve, as an unwillingnessto stand up for what one believes,combined with a courtier'sreadinessto beappropriatedby a powerstructurewhose vices he knows all too well (cf. Casti-glione, Librodel Cortegiano,esp. 4.6-10). The readingoffered here suggeststhat we should not be too quick to opt for eitherpole in eitherof the two op-positions just sketched. We might even go so far as to imagine that Ariosto,among other things, is dramatizingthe conflicting motives that operate in a

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worksuchashis,makingt at oncepettyandpublic-spirited,oldandpusil-lanimous. But even this "open" eading s guidedby personalpreferencesrather hanbyanyultimatecertainty s to thepoet'sntentions.Moreover, should ike to stress,t isnotonlyaquestionof whatAriostodid or did not wish to express.The formal nnovationsof the Furiosowerenot only a response o historicalcircumstances;heywerealsoa responsemadeavailable nd evennecessary ysuch circumstances.fAriostowentbe-yond Boiardo, it was because Boiardo had taught him the basics andrefinements f intratextual arrativenterlace o whichhe couldadd the in-tertextualand historicaldimensions hat I havepointedto here.And if hewas able to facehistoricalcrisisby textualizing t, this wasbecauseVirgil,amongothers,hadalreadyound a vehicle ordoingso,avehicleunavailableto Boiardo,but one whichAriosto'sulture where he Latinhumanist ra-dition was ableto find moredirectexpressionn Italianvernacularextsthanit typicallyhadin theprevious entury madeavailableo him.69 fhe wasableto explore he breakdown f the ideological ivensof theQuattrocentoand before suchas a theologically roundedpolitics,the securedifferen-tiation betweenChristianand pagan,and so on - it was at leastpartlybecauseexternaleventshad made the arbitrary atureof suchassumptionsall too apparent, s it hadalsomadeevidenttheneedto recuperate,eform,and/or revolutionizehem.I hope it is clearby now thatthe formal nnovationsof the Furioso refreightedwith ideological ignificance,hatfundamental, istorically-deter-minedrupturesn culturalmeaningaremaking hemselveselt at thelevelofform.Machiavelli, ne mightpositheuristically,acedmuchthe samecrisisasAriosto,but tackled t directlyat the semantic evel,while Ariosto'sre-sponsewaspreponderantlyyntacticand formal.70 ut suchan oppositionfalsifiesboth the complexrhetoricityof Machiavelliand the high politicalcontent of theFurioso.The theoretical laimof thisessay, hen, is thattheopposition commonequally o "textualist"nd"historicist"scholarship

69Dueexceptionmade forPoliziano's tanzeper la Giostra nd Favolad'Orfio.Recentworkby Fumagalli,Cavallo 1993),Looney(1996 and 1998),Micocci,andRichardTristano(in progress) asstressed he significanthumanisticdimension n Boiardo's areer.As notedearlier,ecent riticism asshownconsistentengagementnthe Innamoratoith notonlyOvidbutalsoVirgiland otherclassicalpoets(note19 above).Still,there s aworldof difference e-tween,say,Boiardo'sranslationf a Latin ranslationf Herodotus ndMachiavelli'setailed,if idiosyncratic,ommentary n Livy,orbetweenBoiardo'sccasionalVirgilianallusions,andAriosto'sadaptation faVirgilianmodel(onthe lastpointsee note 14above).Bruscagli, 995,xx-xxvi,argues onvincinglyhat Boiardodeliberatelyubordinates is use of classical ndca-nonicalvernacularmaterials(e.g.,Boccaccio)o theworldofCarolingianomance,whichmayaccount orthedifferencesromAriosto,whoostentatiouslymitates hecassics.70See lsoAscoli,2000b.

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- between structureand history, form and content, is both false and perni-cious. Historical understanding moves through formal analysis; form isbound inextricably to history.As a final consideration, let me suggest that a historical analysis of theFuriosos form that is also a formal analysis of the poem's representationsofhistory will necessarilydo for the transition from its first and second, fortycanto, editions (1516 and 1521) to the final, forty-sixcanto, versionof 1532what I have already done for the shift from the Innamorato to the firstFurioso. While I do not have space to include extended reflections on thistopic here, my sharp focus on the figures of Leo and Ippolito invites specu-lation on the crucial fact that by 1532 the former had been dead for elevenyears and the latter for twelve. When the final edition appeared,of course,referencesto these two, and to many other people and events, had lost mostof the topical, historical force they had had in 1516 or even 1521.71YetLeoand Ippolito retain,and even expand, theirdecisive structural-thematicrolesin 1532, suggesting how basic they had been to the internal structureof thepoem from its inception. Defunct or not, Leo still remains the focus of can-tos 17 and 26, while the late Ippolito continues as the poem's explicitdedicatee and the focal point of the principal Este encomia, especially incantos 3 and 46.72This is so notwithstanding increased referencesto Ario-sto'ssecond patron, Duke Alfonso d'Este,and to the EmperorCharlesV, thefigure who dominated Italian and European politics in the 1520s and1530s, as Julius and Leo had during the first twenty yearsof the century.The tendency of the final Furiosoto include figures from different his-torical moments side by side, referring to them in a newly generalizedpresent tense that belies historicalchronology and "actuality," as been aptlydubbed "synchronization"by Alberto Casadei.73Against Casadei's nsistenceon the full historical engagement of the 1532 edition, however, I would ar-gue that this process furthers the larger process of the textualization ofhistory at work in the firstFuriosoby reinforcingthe reader's enseof a poetictemporality increasinglydistinct from historicalchronology. This point thenleads us toward the distinctly unfashionable notion that the 1516 editionwas more immediately a responseto historical crisis than the final version.74

71Casadei,988b, 17 n. 20, astutelyobserves hatthechanged ontextof the 1532 edi-tion changes he significance f segments hat arenot changed n themselves the notiondeserves onsiderable ttentionanddevelopment.

72Thechanges n the treatmentnotedby Casadei,1988b,24-27, 55, 75-76 aresignifi-cantbut do not alterIppolito'sundamental lace n the poem.73Casadei, 988b,50-56 and 153.74SeeHenderson or an interesting ttempt o demonstrateAriosto'shypersensitivityohis immediatehistorical ontextduringvariousphasesof compositionof the firstFurioso.

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It has been a topos of Ariosto criticism that the 1532 poem is moreaware of crisis than its precursor,75 ut, as we have seen, that is only partiallytrue. Historically, in fact, the 1520s and early 1530s were less immediatelythreatening to Ferraraand to Ariosto personally than the earlier period.76Furthermore,by 1532 the outlines of a new order,social and political, wereemerging that tended to guaranteestability for the Italian peninsula, even ifat the cost of the loss of political autonomy and of a certain openness of cul-turalpossibilities that had been an important condition sine qua non for theachievements of such as Machiavelli and Ariosto.7 The underlying point isthat the crisis that dominated the first two decades of the sixteenth centurywas such because it was not only a time of military-political upheaval - inthis sense, it is hard to find a time in human history not in crisis - but alsoone of a radical destabilization in ideological assumptions, in naturalizedcultural boundaries (Bourdieu'sdoxa).78By the time of the appearanceof thethird and last Furioso,the project of ideological recuperationand reinstanti-ation was well under way - brilliantly represented by such transitionalworks as Castiglione's Cortegianoand Bembo's Prosedella volgar lingua.79Nonetheless, although the 1532 edition is a far less direct product andrepresentation of historical crisis than the 1516 edition, it is, for this veryreason, more able to thematize crisis and to transform it from a series of adhominem attacks and crisde coeur nto an analysis of ideology in more gen-

75SeeCaretti;Saccone,1983;cf. Bigi,33, andAscoli, 1987, 9-10 contra.76Tohisextent agreewithCasadei1988b,154),whodistinguishesetweenhe ocalFerrareseoncernsn the 1516 edition and thenational, talian oncernsof the 1532 edition.However, n doing so he trivializes he presenceof 17.73-79 in the 1516 edition (Ariosto,1960, 517-19;cf. Casadei,1988b,41) andunderstateshe internationalharacter f the bat-tles that were being fought in and around Este territory,thus misunderstanding thesignificance f a crisisof the local(nothing ess than the end of awayof life in the peninsulabasedon small, ocal states Ferrara, rbino, Florence,o namejusta few).

77In1532 the long termnegativeoutcomeof the epochof crisis n Italywasdearlyvis-ible: Italywasat the mercyof foreigninvadersand especially he EmperorCharlesV; thepapacy's uthoritywasunderattackbyLutheran eforms ndsubject o the violentindignityof the Sackof Rome;and so on. Yet,AriostoandFerrara ereratherbetteroff thantheyhadbeen in 1516, not to mention the late teens when the darkCinqueCantiwereapparentlycomposed (see Casadei, 1988a; Quint, 1996; Zatti, 1996, chap. 2). Having sided withCharlesagainstClement and the Leagueof Cognacin 1527, Alfonso hadfinallyrecoveredReggioandModena. While the reconciliationof the Popeand the Emperorn 1529-1530mayhave been worrisome, t had createdno seriousproblemsfor the Ferrarese y 1532.Moreover,Ariostopersonallywasshownparticularavorsby the Emperor andin generalhadbegunto enjoymore of the fruitsof fame thathis immensely uccessfulpoem,as well ashis variousplays,now affordedhim (cf.Bigi,34-35).

78Bourdieu, 64-71.79Cf.Bigi,66.

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eral and reflective terms.80Returning to our example, it can be shown thateven as Leo and Ippolito tend to lose their historical specificity and to func-tion exclusively within the intratextual dynamics of the Furioso,81hey arebeing redeployed within complex explorations of the problematic relation-ship of poetry and power, poet and patron, in general.In fact, one of the main principles of revisionvisibly at work in 1532 isthe extension and transformationof key episodes from 1516, including ep-isodes with significant topical content, in a process that hovers between theintertextual and intratextual.82For example, language and imagery that isclosely linked to Ippolito and Leo becomes a primary building block of theone major addition to the genealogical narrative, the story of Ruggiero,Bradamante,and Leone told in cantos 44-46.

Though this point could be made in a variety of ways, one examplemust here stand for all - the fate of the intratextualechoes of Inferno32-33on which the critique of Leo hinges. In particular, the prominent stylisticdevice of"pii che . . . pot&" hat marks derivation from Inferno33.75, in1532 also becomes an intratextual link between apparently unrelated epi-sodes.83In 1516, there is a single use of this stylistic device, confined (as wehave seen) to what was then canto 15 (17 in 1532), whose allusiveforcewasthen sharpened in 1521 by the introduction of the reference to the Orco as"fierpastor" (Ariosto, 1960, 508). In 1532, this stylistic device was intro-duced at two crucial junctures in canto 21. The canto offers a displacedversion of the Hippolytus/Phaedra story in the tale of the faithful Filandroand the faithless Gabrina, and thus, like canto 17, constituted a crucialnexus between historical personage and literarynarrative,as it also offers avarianton the Orrigille/Grifone story.The echoes appearin stanza54 (lines7-8), which signals Filandro'sdescent from exemplar of"fede" into willing

80Themajornarrativedditions o thepoemaddress entralideological oncerns thepoliticsof tyranny;he ethicsof"fede;"he cultural onstruction f gender dentity- which,althoughpresentn 1516, arefarmoreexplicitly reatedn 1532 (DallaPalma,219-25).81Cf.Ascoli, 1987, 388.

82Thisphenomenon s more obvious n the case of two of the fourmajornarrative d-ditions: he Olimpiaepisodeclearlydoubles he earlier pisodeofAngelicaand the OrcaandtheMarganorrepisode sclearly palinodic ewriting f theepisodeof the "femine micide"(cantos19-20 in the 1532edition).The "Rocca i Tristano"pisode s lessspecificallyinkedto a single 1516 episode (thoughit doesprovidean obliquecommentaryon Bradamante'sjealousdespair),but it too has a function of rewriting most especially n the ekphras-tic-historicalpassagewhich recants he pro-French ias(howeverqualified)of 1516. Of theRuggiero-Leone-Bradamanteddition,I shallspeakbelow.

83Cabaniasrecently ivenusalengthycatalogue f variousways nwhichAriostousesverbalrepetition o connectdisparate pisodes, houghshe does not discuss his particularexample.

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pawn of Gabrina's ust, and in stanza3 (lines 7-8), which implicates Zerbinoin the same foolish adherence to a rigid and self-destructive ethos of "fede"as Filandro.84Canto 21, in turn, became in 1532 the primary verbal andthematic source for the episode of Ruggiero, Bradamante, and Leone, andespecially of its complex exploration of the ideology of faith.85Prominentlyfeatured are two additional echoes of Inferno33.75, which are, within theintratexualeconomy of the poem, equally echoes of Furioso17.48 and 21.3and 54, at stanzas 34 and 56 of canto 45.86Once the intricate verbal/thematic concatenation that leads from canto17 through canto 21 to cantos 44-46 has been identified, one might thenspeculate that Ruggiero's misrepresentation of his identity when he wearsLeone'sarmor into combat with Bradamante(45.55, 69) is indebted to theearly episode of Grifone and Martano's exchange of armor and identity,which had similarly near tragic consequences. And one might wonderwhether the characterLeone's name is not derived from Leo's, thus consti-tuting the most fitting emblem for the sublimation of a historical personageinto the narrativeeconomy of the poem.87Here a crucialquestion arises.The addition of the materials in cantos 44and 45 cearly gives the genealogical narrative,whose purpose is to imaginean historical line leading from the time of the poem into the contemporaryworld of Estense Ferrara,greater prominence and centrality in the 1532 edi-tion, reinforcing the sense of epic closure.88How is it then possible to arguethat the 1532 edition is lesshistorical in orientation than that of 1516? Mypoint, however, is that history has a different place in 1532 than 1516, notat all that it is absent (how could it be?). The difference is between a rela-

84For detailedreadingof canto21, seeAscoli,2000b.85For dditionalelaboration f this argument eeAscoli, 1987, 330-31 andn122; andAscoli, 2000b. Fordebateconcerningthe valueof (ethical)"faith" n the Furioso, ee alsoDurling,167-76;Saccone,1974 and1983;Wiggins;Bonifazi; ndZatti,1990, esp.91-111.8Furthermore, key terms that appearin the earlier Ariostan echoings are foundthroughout he two cantosreinforcing hematicconnections:"timor" 5.34-37 (5 times);"ostinazione"4.37.7, 44.45.1, 45.86.6, 45.107.6; "promesso"4.35.4, 44.47.8, 44.53.3,44.58.6, 44.69.2, 44.75.4, 45.6.1, 45.22.1, 45.60.1, 45.108.3, 45.109.3, 45.116.2.87Possibleurthersupport orthishypothesis omesfrom 1) the ostentatiouslinkingofa nominal ion with a "roarer"(Ruggiero)whichperhapsrecallsAriosto's arlierexegesisofthe papalname("sceltol fiero nome / perche u ruggi"); ) the fact thatLeone is the son ofanemperornamedafter he originalCostantino bothbecauseof theearlier llusion o Con-stantine's onation ndose proximity o Leo'snameandbecause he memoryof Constantinealways vokesproblemsof papalauthority); nd,moretenuously,3) a seriesof locutionsus-ing the crucialadjective"fiero," ne of whichconflates he two Danteanpassages choedincanto17- "fierodolore" 45.57.1;cf. 44.81.3; 85.7).88Marsh; igi, 53;Casadei,1992;cf. Quint, 1979.

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tively direct experience of disruptivehistoricalcrisis,as well as an immediatesense of connection to the political-social world, on the one hand, and, onthe other, the fantasy of cultural continuity and stability embodied in themarriageof Bradamanteand Ruggiero.89The Ruggiero-Bradamante-Leoneepisode, then, sets the myth of Estense genealogy in sharp relief, but alsotends to fold it increasingly into the plot of the poem, to make it part andparcel of the Furiosos chivalric fictions.9At the beginning of this essayI arguedthat the essence of Ariosto'sstrat-egy for confronting and absorbing historical crisiswas the deployment of acombined intertextual and intratextualentrelacement that pitted non-narra-tive formal and thematic elements against narrative.By 1532, however, thenon-narrativeelements of historicalcrisis werebeing increasingly, hough notcompletely, reabsorbed nto the primarynarrativeof the Furiosoand specifi-cally into the story that promotes the illusion of an unbroken and relativelyuntroubled link between the chivalric past and the present-day FerraraofAriosto and the Este family.This turn to the representationof historyas nar-rative,which stabilizesthe relationshipbetween past and present,fiction andhistory, is the antithesis of the representationof history as crisisand in crisis.Curiously enough, although the neo-Virgilian model of genealogy is whatturns the Furiosoaway from romance and toward epic, and thus, in Quint'sterms,constitutes the fundamentalrupturebetweenAriosto and Boiardo,thisdevelopment also and equally constitutes a return to the Innamoratoand amove awayfrom the most radical nnovationsof the first Furioso.Not long af-ter the episode of the Orco, Boiardoinaugurates he genealogicalnarrative nwhich Ruggiero and Bradamantebecome the founders of the Este dynasty

89In1516, thepoem'spenultimate pisode whatbecame antos42 and43 in 1532)wasthe futilejourneyof Rinaldodownthrough he Italianpeninsula n order o join Orlandoand co. atthe battleof LipadusaAriosto,1960).The fociof theepisodeareanekphrastic e-scriptionof a castlenearMantuaand two interpolated, eo-Boccaccian ovelle.All of thesematerials vokethe originsandthe cultureof Ferrarandher sistercity,Mantua(where sa-bellad'EstereignedasDuchess).Cf. Casadei,1992;Martinez,1994 and 1999.

90Pampaloni644) andMarshboth takethe Easternocaleof the Ruggiero-Leonen-counter,andespeciallyhecityof Belgrade, stopicallyallusiveo the Turkishhreatof 1529.Even f thisisso, itsobliqueapproachs a farcryfromtheexplicitpresentationf suchtopicsexemplifiedby the proemanddigression f canto 17, perhapsbecause,

howeverlarge n theabstract he paganmenacemightseem,it did not have the scandalousmmediacy hattheItalianwarsdid (rememberhat in 17.73-79 Ariosto, ike Dante,sees suchextramuralon-flicts as normaland a desirablealternative o warfareamong Christians).A much morehorrifying andtransparentlyllegorical)"eastern dventure"s the civilwarof the CinqueCantienacted n thehereticalprecincts f Prague. wouldtendin anycaseto think thattheemphasis hould all on theappearancef animperial eir, he sonof anamesake fConstan-tine, in an era of renewedmperialism.

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