Jane E. Everson, Andrew Hiscock, and Stefano Jossa
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- September 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780197266502
- eISBN:
- 9780191884221
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- British Academy
- DOI:
- 10.5871/bacad/9780197266502.003.0001
- Subject:
- Classical Studies, Poetry and Poets: Classical, Early, and Medieval
The introduction presents the Orlando Furioso, tracing briefly its gestation and identifying its major themes and concerns – love, war, moral, social and ethical issues. It assesses the importance of ...
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The introduction presents the Orlando Furioso, tracing briefly its gestation and identifying its major themes and concerns – love, war, moral, social and ethical issues. It assesses the importance of the first edition, published in 1516, and discusses its continuing presence in the subsequent versions of the poem, and hence its influence on later adaptations and reactions to Ariosto’s poem. The chapter introduces the four principal sections of the volume – the Furioso in the visual arts; from the Elizabethan period to the Enlightenment; from Gothic to Romantic; and text and translation in the modern era. In presenting each of these, the introduction surveys the wider cultural contexts for the reception and influence of the Furioso in art, literature and music, the varying critical responses displayed over the centuries to Ariosto’s poem, and the myriad ways in which creative writers, artists and musicians in the English-speaking world have mined the Furioso as a never-ending source of inspiration.Less
The introduction presents the Orlando Furioso, tracing briefly its gestation and identifying its major themes and concerns – love, war, moral, social and ethical issues. It assesses the importance of the first edition, published in 1516, and discusses its continuing presence in the subsequent versions of the poem, and hence its influence on later adaptations and reactions to Ariosto’s poem. The chapter introduces the four principal sections of the volume – the Furioso in the visual arts; from the Elizabethan period to the Enlightenment; from Gothic to Romantic; and text and translation in the modern era. In presenting each of these, the introduction surveys the wider cultural contexts for the reception and influence of the Furioso in art, literature and music, the varying critical responses displayed over the centuries to Ariosto’s poem, and the myriad ways in which creative writers, artists and musicians in the English-speaking world have mined the Furioso as a never-ending source of inspiration.
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- June 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780804750462
- eISBN:
- 9780804767446
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Stanford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.11126/stanford/9780804750462.003.0004
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
This chapter examines Ludovico Ariosto's poem Orlando Furioso and argues that his depiction of its structure is far more deeply engaged than has been recognized with the psychic structure of ...
More
This chapter examines Ludovico Ariosto's poem Orlando Furioso and argues that his depiction of its structure is far more deeply engaged than has been recognized with the psychic structure of love-melancholy. Drawing on Petrarch's self-conscious poetic exploration of the atra voluptas of melancholy love in his Canzoniere, it analyzes Ariosto's etiology of Orlando's furor and descent into madness, as well as the phantasmic dolce error (sweet error). The chapter also considers the palace and how it generates the object of desire as a phantasm that lures the lover out of the real world in an increasingly frantic search for what can never be grasped. Orlando's refusal to accept the loss of Angelica results in an obsessive rage that seems to end symbolically only when, through the mediation of Virgil's elegiac sixth eclogue (solvite me), his quest turns toward the accommodation of death. The chapter also focuses on a shift toward epic closure that is signaled by Ariosto's use of the Virgilian topos of the mors immatura, or untimely death of young warriors.Less
This chapter examines Ludovico Ariosto's poem Orlando Furioso and argues that his depiction of its structure is far more deeply engaged than has been recognized with the psychic structure of love-melancholy. Drawing on Petrarch's self-conscious poetic exploration of the atra voluptas of melancholy love in his Canzoniere, it analyzes Ariosto's etiology of Orlando's furor and descent into madness, as well as the phantasmic dolce error (sweet error). The chapter also considers the palace and how it generates the object of desire as a phantasm that lures the lover out of the real world in an increasingly frantic search for what can never be grasped. Orlando's refusal to accept the loss of Angelica results in an obsessive rage that seems to end symbolically only when, through the mediation of Virgil's elegiac sixth eclogue (solvite me), his quest turns toward the accommodation of death. The chapter also focuses on a shift toward epic closure that is signaled by Ariosto's use of the Virgilian topos of the mors immatura, or untimely death of young warriors.
Jane E. Everson, Andrew Hiscock, and Stefano Jossa (eds)
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- September 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780197266502
- eISBN:
- 9780191884221
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- British Academy
- DOI:
- 10.5871/bacad/9780197266502.001.0001
- Subject:
- Classical Studies, Poetry and Poets: Classical, Early, and Medieval
The volume assesses the changing impact on English culture over 500 years of Ariosto’s poem, the Orlando Furioso, first published in Italy in 1516, and subsequently in an expanded version in 1532. ...
More
The volume assesses the changing impact on English culture over 500 years of Ariosto’s poem, the Orlando Furioso, first published in Italy in 1516, and subsequently in an expanded version in 1532. Individual chapters address the recurring presence of Ariosto’s poem in English literature, but also the multimedial nature of the transmission of the Furioso into English culture: through the visual arts, theatre, music and spectacle to video games and the internet, as well as through often heated critical debates. The introduction provides an overview of the history of criticism and interpretation of the Furioso in England. Within the four main sections – entitled: Before reading – the image; From the Elizabethans to the Enlightenment; Gothic and Romantic Ariosto; Text and translation in the modern era – individual studies explore key moments in the reception of the poem into English culture: the adaptation and translation of the poem among the Elizabethans; Milton’s detailed appreciation of the work; and the ambivalent attitudes of eighteenth-century writers and critics; the influence of illustrations to the poem; and its transformation into opera for the English stage. Emphasis is also placed on: the dynamic responses of Romantic writers to Ariosto; the crucial work of editors and translators in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries; and the stimulating adaptations and rewritings by modern authors. The volume concludes with a comprehensive bibliography.Less
The volume assesses the changing impact on English culture over 500 years of Ariosto’s poem, the Orlando Furioso, first published in Italy in 1516, and subsequently in an expanded version in 1532. Individual chapters address the recurring presence of Ariosto’s poem in English literature, but also the multimedial nature of the transmission of the Furioso into English culture: through the visual arts, theatre, music and spectacle to video games and the internet, as well as through often heated critical debates. The introduction provides an overview of the history of criticism and interpretation of the Furioso in England. Within the four main sections – entitled: Before reading – the image; From the Elizabethans to the Enlightenment; Gothic and Romantic Ariosto; Text and translation in the modern era – individual studies explore key moments in the reception of the poem into English culture: the adaptation and translation of the poem among the Elizabethans; Milton’s detailed appreciation of the work; and the ambivalent attitudes of eighteenth-century writers and critics; the influence of illustrations to the poem; and its transformation into opera for the English stage. Emphasis is also placed on: the dynamic responses of Romantic writers to Ariosto; the crucial work of editors and translators in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries; and the stimulating adaptations and rewritings by modern authors. The volume concludes with a comprehensive bibliography.
Albert Russell Ascoli
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- January 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780823234288
- eISBN:
- 9780823241231
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823234288.003.0007
- Subject:
- Literature, European Literature
Although Ariosto is often thought of as a literary fantasist, this chapter argues for his oblique political engagement in his romance-epic, Orlando furioso, primarily through the strategic ...
More
Although Ariosto is often thought of as a literary fantasist, this chapter argues for his oblique political engagement in his romance-epic, Orlando furioso, primarily through the strategic juxtaposition of passages referring to contemporary and historical events with narratives that provide indirect and allusive commentary on them. In particular, the episode of the cannibalistic Orco (canto 17)—a carry over from Boiardo's Innamoramento di Orlando and a descendant of the Homeric Cyclops—presents the monster as a “fier pastor” (fierce shepherd) at once echoing Dante's damned Ugolino and creating a link to Leo X as pastoral pontiff. Like Machiavelli Ariosto uses literary allusion to engage in a critique of Pope Leo and other Italian rulers, but also to stage his own problematic relationship to such figures. In larger terms, this chapter both illustrates the way in which Renaissance literature engages indirectly with menacing historical context and argues for the crucial role that formal analysis has in uncovering the “historicity” of literary texts.Less
Although Ariosto is often thought of as a literary fantasist, this chapter argues for his oblique political engagement in his romance-epic, Orlando furioso, primarily through the strategic juxtaposition of passages referring to contemporary and historical events with narratives that provide indirect and allusive commentary on them. In particular, the episode of the cannibalistic Orco (canto 17)—a carry over from Boiardo's Innamoramento di Orlando and a descendant of the Homeric Cyclops—presents the monster as a “fier pastor” (fierce shepherd) at once echoing Dante's damned Ugolino and creating a link to Leo X as pastoral pontiff. Like Machiavelli Ariosto uses literary allusion to engage in a critique of Pope Leo and other Italian rulers, but also to stage his own problematic relationship to such figures. In larger terms, this chapter both illustrates the way in which Renaissance literature engages indirectly with menacing historical context and argues for the crucial role that formal analysis has in uncovering the “historicity” of literary texts.
Peter Mack
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- May 2020
- ISBN:
- 9780691194004
- eISBN:
- 9780691195353
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Princeton University Press
- DOI:
- 10.23943/princeton/9780691194004.003.0004
- Subject:
- History, History of Ideas
This chapter takes a look at Orlando Furioso (1516, 1532), Gerusalemme Liberata (1581), and The Faerie Queene (1596), which are the recognized epic masterpieces of their eras. They draw in succession ...
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This chapter takes a look at Orlando Furioso (1516, 1532), Gerusalemme Liberata (1581), and The Faerie Queene (1596), which are the recognized epic masterpieces of their eras. They draw in succession on each other and on a wide range of classical and romance texts, many of them known to the first audiences of these three poems. The chapter investigates the ways in which Ludovico Ariosto, Torquato Tasso, and Edmund Spenser used their predecessors and the different effects they achieved from a shared heritage. It examines the ways in which a series of authors used both their immediate predecessors and their sense of a long tradition of epic writing to create something new. The chapter argues that Ariosto aimed to shock and surprise his audience. Tasso reacted to Ariosto by combining a more serious and unified epic on the lines of the Iliad. Spenser's idea of devoting each book to a hero and a virtue presents a structure which is easier to comprehend than Ariosto's, yet looser and more open to surprises than Tasso's.Less
This chapter takes a look at Orlando Furioso (1516, 1532), Gerusalemme Liberata (1581), and The Faerie Queene (1596), which are the recognized epic masterpieces of their eras. They draw in succession on each other and on a wide range of classical and romance texts, many of them known to the first audiences of these three poems. The chapter investigates the ways in which Ludovico Ariosto, Torquato Tasso, and Edmund Spenser used their predecessors and the different effects they achieved from a shared heritage. It examines the ways in which a series of authors used both their immediate predecessors and their sense of a long tradition of epic writing to create something new. The chapter argues that Ariosto aimed to shock and surprise his audience. Tasso reacted to Ariosto by combining a more serious and unified epic on the lines of the Iliad. Spenser's idea of devoting each book to a hero and a virtue presents a structure which is easier to comprehend than Ariosto's, yet looser and more open to surprises than Tasso's.
Marion A. Wells
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- June 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780804750462
- eISBN:
- 9780804767446
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Stanford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.11126/stanford/9780804750462.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
This book offers a new reading of early modern romance in the light of historically contemporary accounts of mind, and specifically the medical tradition of love-melancholy. It argues that the ...
More
This book offers a new reading of early modern romance in the light of historically contemporary accounts of mind, and specifically the medical tradition of love-melancholy. It argues that the medical profile of the melancholic lover provides an essential context for understanding the characteristic patterns of romance: narrative deferral, epistemological uncertainty, and the endless quest for a quasi-phantasmic beloved. The book establishes a detailed historical basis for investigating the psychological structure of romance. It begins by tracing the development of the medical disorder first known in the Latin west as amor hereos (lovesickness) from its earliest roots in Greek and Arabic medicine to its translation into the Latin medical tradition. Drawing on this detailed historical material, the book considers three important early modern romances: Ludovico Ariosto's Orlando Furioso, Torquato Tasso's Gerusalemme Liberata, and Edmund Spenser's The Faerie Queene, concluding with a brief consideration of the significance of this literary and medical legacy for Romanticism. Most broadly, the interdisciplinary nature of this study allows the author to investigate the central critical problem of early modern subjectivity in new ways.Less
This book offers a new reading of early modern romance in the light of historically contemporary accounts of mind, and specifically the medical tradition of love-melancholy. It argues that the medical profile of the melancholic lover provides an essential context for understanding the characteristic patterns of romance: narrative deferral, epistemological uncertainty, and the endless quest for a quasi-phantasmic beloved. The book establishes a detailed historical basis for investigating the psychological structure of romance. It begins by tracing the development of the medical disorder first known in the Latin west as amor hereos (lovesickness) from its earliest roots in Greek and Arabic medicine to its translation into the Latin medical tradition. Drawing on this detailed historical material, the book considers three important early modern romances: Ludovico Ariosto's Orlando Furioso, Torquato Tasso's Gerusalemme Liberata, and Edmund Spenser's The Faerie Queene, concluding with a brief consideration of the significance of this literary and medical legacy for Romanticism. Most broadly, the interdisciplinary nature of this study allows the author to investigate the central critical problem of early modern subjectivity in new ways.
Tim Carter
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- September 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780197266502
- eISBN:
- 9780191884221
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- British Academy
- DOI:
- 10.5871/bacad/9780197266502.003.0009
- Subject:
- Classical Studies, Poetry and Poets: Classical, Early, and Medieval
Orlando Furioso had a life in the European imagination well beyond the poem itself, and ranging from the visual arts to the operatic stage. Over a hundred operas based on it were composed between ...
More
Orlando Furioso had a life in the European imagination well beyond the poem itself, and ranging from the visual arts to the operatic stage. Over a hundred operas based on it were composed between 1619 and 1924, and they tell us a great deal not only about the reception of Orlando Furioso across time and space, but also as regards the contribution of a particularly ‘mad’ genre to issues that variously dominated particular political, social, and cultural contexts. The settings of Orlando, Ariodante, and Alcina by George Frideric Handel, composed for London in the early 1730s, provide good examples: they reveal the fashion in England for matters Turkish (seen also in the architecture of Vauxhall Gardens), as well as emerging notions of the nature of madness and of the ways in which it might be treated.Less
Orlando Furioso had a life in the European imagination well beyond the poem itself, and ranging from the visual arts to the operatic stage. Over a hundred operas based on it were composed between 1619 and 1924, and they tell us a great deal not only about the reception of Orlando Furioso across time and space, but also as regards the contribution of a particularly ‘mad’ genre to issues that variously dominated particular political, social, and cultural contexts. The settings of Orlando, Ariodante, and Alcina by George Frideric Handel, composed for London in the early 1730s, provide good examples: they reveal the fashion in England for matters Turkish (seen also in the architecture of Vauxhall Gardens), as well as emerging notions of the nature of madness and of the ways in which it might be treated.
Dennis Austin Britton
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- September 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780823257140
- eISBN:
- 9780823261482
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823257140.003.0004
- Subject:
- Literature, European Literature
Chapter 3 considers John Harington’s distinctly Protestant translation of Ludovico Ariosto’s epic romance, Orlando Furioso. It suggests that Harington’s translation gained legitimacy by creating a ...
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Chapter 3 considers John Harington’s distinctly Protestant translation of Ludovico Ariosto’s epic romance, Orlando Furioso. It suggests that Harington’s translation gained legitimacy by creating a reading experience that was similar to that of reading the Bible. Like early modern English Bibles, Harington’s translation uses paratextual materials—prefaces, marginal glosses, “Moralls” and “Allegories”—in order to guide readers’ interpretations and foster moral and spiritual transformation. Just as reading the Bible (alongside preaching) was deemed necessary for spiritual transformation, Harington’s translation and subsequent allegorizing of Ariosto’s poem seek to transform and indeed convert readers. Moreover, Harington’s translation is itself a convert: The formerly infidel text, a repugnant Romish romance, is transformed into an English Protestant poem. Harington thus likens the translation and allegorizing of Orlando Furioso to religious conversion.Less
Chapter 3 considers John Harington’s distinctly Protestant translation of Ludovico Ariosto’s epic romance, Orlando Furioso. It suggests that Harington’s translation gained legitimacy by creating a reading experience that was similar to that of reading the Bible. Like early modern English Bibles, Harington’s translation uses paratextual materials—prefaces, marginal glosses, “Moralls” and “Allegories”—in order to guide readers’ interpretations and foster moral and spiritual transformation. Just as reading the Bible (alongside preaching) was deemed necessary for spiritual transformation, Harington’s translation and subsequent allegorizing of Ariosto’s poem seek to transform and indeed convert readers. Moreover, Harington’s translation is itself a convert: The formerly infidel text, a repugnant Romish romance, is transformed into an English Protestant poem. Harington thus likens the translation and allegorizing of Orlando Furioso to religious conversion.
Tobias Gregory
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- September 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780197266502
- eISBN:
- 9780191884221
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- British Academy
- DOI:
- 10.5871/bacad/9780197266502.003.0006
- Subject:
- Classical Studies, Poetry and Poets: Classical, Early, and Medieval
How did Milton read Ariosto? The standard account holds that he admired Orlando Furioso in his youth and dismissed it in his maturity, rejecting chivalric romance in Paradise Lost as ‘the skill of ...
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How did Milton read Ariosto? The standard account holds that he admired Orlando Furioso in his youth and dismissed it in his maturity, rejecting chivalric romance in Paradise Lost as ‘the skill of artifice or office mean’. This essay revisits the question. It finds a stronger and more positive connection between the Furioso and Paradise Lost in the two poems’ expansive sense of space, and in several prominent Ariostan allusions in Milton’s epic.Less
How did Milton read Ariosto? The standard account holds that he admired Orlando Furioso in his youth and dismissed it in his maturity, rejecting chivalric romance in Paradise Lost as ‘the skill of artifice or office mean’. This essay revisits the question. It finds a stronger and more positive connection between the Furioso and Paradise Lost in the two poems’ expansive sense of space, and in several prominent Ariostan allusions in Milton’s epic.
Dennis Austin Britton
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- September 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780823257140
- eISBN:
- 9780823261482
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823257140.003.0005
- Subject:
- Literature, European Literature
Chapter 4 argues that William Shakespeare’s Othello both reveals the work of genre and geography in the formation of religious identities and enacts a debate about the uses of romance’s two competing ...
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Chapter 4 argues that William Shakespeare’s Othello both reveals the work of genre and geography in the formation of religious identities and enacts a debate about the uses of romance’s two competing goals: to transform and to restore identity. Othello is patterned after Ruggiero in Ludovico Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso; Ruggiero is a convert to Christianity who, like Othello, marries an Italian woman. Like Orlando Furioso, Othello employs the infidel-conversion motif, which aims to erase the significance of racial, geographical, and cultural difference. Iago, however, seeks to reverse the effects of the infidel-conversion motif in order to restore Othello to what presumably is his prior Muslim identity. Because romances usually figure marriage and baptism as sacraments that work complementarily to create Christian identity, Iago aims to disrupt the marriage bond between Othello and his wife; dissolving Othello and Desdemona’s marriage undoes Othello’s Christian identity.Less
Chapter 4 argues that William Shakespeare’s Othello both reveals the work of genre and geography in the formation of religious identities and enacts a debate about the uses of romance’s two competing goals: to transform and to restore identity. Othello is patterned after Ruggiero in Ludovico Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso; Ruggiero is a convert to Christianity who, like Othello, marries an Italian woman. Like Orlando Furioso, Othello employs the infidel-conversion motif, which aims to erase the significance of racial, geographical, and cultural difference. Iago, however, seeks to reverse the effects of the infidel-conversion motif in order to restore Othello to what presumably is his prior Muslim identity. Because romances usually figure marriage and baptism as sacraments that work complementarily to create Christian identity, Iago aims to disrupt the marriage bond between Othello and his wife; dissolving Othello and Desdemona’s marriage undoes Othello’s Christian identity.
Albert Russell Ascoli
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- January 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780823234288
- eISBN:
- 9780823241231
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823234288.003.0008
- Subject:
- Literature, European Literature
This chapter analyzes Ariosto's elaborate exploration of the politics of gender and the gendering of politics in the curious tale of the defeat of the phallocratic giant, Marganorre, by the warrior ...
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This chapter analyzes Ariosto's elaborate exploration of the politics of gender and the gendering of politics in the curious tale of the defeat of the phallocratic giant, Marganorre, by the warrior women, Marfisa and Bradamante. Like Chapter 4, this chapter suggests an unveiling of the gendered, sexualized categories that subtend not only the social relations of men and women but also the overarching legal and political order of which they are a part. Ariosto stages the ambivalence of his narrative avatar, who both exposes and reproduces the mechanisms by which male poets and patriarchal potentates keep women “beneath them.” Key elements are the poet's use of a little-known male mythological counterpart to the Medusa, Ericthonius, to dramatize the monstrous appropriation of female power by men; his play upon a symbolic proper name, Vittoria Colonna, whose declared role as emblem of female talent is cunningly absorbed into a symbolic political order at whose center stands a triumphal phallus, a “colonna.” The chapter points as well to the problem of deploying contemporary categories (Freudian, Lacanian, Derridean, or Butlerian) upon earlier periods where discourses of gender were quite different than our own. It makes the case, however, that the textual evidence lends itself readily to such an epoch-bridging encounter.Less
This chapter analyzes Ariosto's elaborate exploration of the politics of gender and the gendering of politics in the curious tale of the defeat of the phallocratic giant, Marganorre, by the warrior women, Marfisa and Bradamante. Like Chapter 4, this chapter suggests an unveiling of the gendered, sexualized categories that subtend not only the social relations of men and women but also the overarching legal and political order of which they are a part. Ariosto stages the ambivalence of his narrative avatar, who both exposes and reproduces the mechanisms by which male poets and patriarchal potentates keep women “beneath them.” Key elements are the poet's use of a little-known male mythological counterpart to the Medusa, Ericthonius, to dramatize the monstrous appropriation of female power by men; his play upon a symbolic proper name, Vittoria Colonna, whose declared role as emblem of female talent is cunningly absorbed into a symbolic political order at whose center stands a triumphal phallus, a “colonna.” The chapter points as well to the problem of deploying contemporary categories (Freudian, Lacanian, Derridean, or Butlerian) upon earlier periods where discourses of gender were quite different than our own. It makes the case, however, that the textual evidence lends itself readily to such an epoch-bridging encounter.
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- June 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780804750462
- eISBN:
- 9780804767446
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Stanford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.11126/stanford/9780804750462.003.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
This book explores the complex literary/medical discourse of “amorous melancholy,” or “love-melancholy,” in relation to early modern romance. It argues that the medical profile of the erotic ...
More
This book explores the complex literary/medical discourse of “amorous melancholy,” or “love-melancholy,” in relation to early modern romance. It argues that the medical profile of the erotic melancholic, whose judgment is subverted by the obsessive thought patterns (assidua cogitatio) and corrupt imagination that characterizes this disease constitutes a crucial model for the questing subject of romance. The book offers a historical and theoretical account of the medical and philosophical bases of love-melancholy as a disease of the imagination. It examines the significance of three early modern romances for Romanticism: Ludovico Ariosto's Orlando Furioso, Torquato Tasso's Gerusalemme Liberata, and Edmund Spenser's Faerie Queene. The book also looks at Marsilio Ficino's De amore (1469), focusing on the complex medical history that makes possible Ficino's own commentary on love-melancholy and its relationship with grief and contemporary psychoanalytic theory. Furthermore, it discusses the philosophical and medical subplot of romance's story of atra voluptas and its attendant torments, with an emphasis on how this subplot gives voice to a robustly anti-Platonic insistence on the irreplaceability of the unique beloved.Less
This book explores the complex literary/medical discourse of “amorous melancholy,” or “love-melancholy,” in relation to early modern romance. It argues that the medical profile of the erotic melancholic, whose judgment is subverted by the obsessive thought patterns (assidua cogitatio) and corrupt imagination that characterizes this disease constitutes a crucial model for the questing subject of romance. The book offers a historical and theoretical account of the medical and philosophical bases of love-melancholy as a disease of the imagination. It examines the significance of three early modern romances for Romanticism: Ludovico Ariosto's Orlando Furioso, Torquato Tasso's Gerusalemme Liberata, and Edmund Spenser's Faerie Queene. The book also looks at Marsilio Ficino's De amore (1469), focusing on the complex medical history that makes possible Ficino's own commentary on love-melancholy and its relationship with grief and contemporary psychoanalytic theory. Furthermore, it discusses the philosophical and medical subplot of romance's story of atra voluptas and its attendant torments, with an emphasis on how this subplot gives voice to a robustly anti-Platonic insistence on the irreplaceability of the unique beloved.
