Ludovico Ariosto Biography and List of Works

Italian poet, remembered primarily for his ORLANDO FURIOSO, published in its final version in 1532. Ariosto's work was the most celebrated narrative poem of the Italian high Renaissance, and the first example of modern poetry to provoke widespread critical controversy.

Ariosto was born in Reggio Emilia, as the son of Count Niccolò Ariosto. At the age of then his family moved to Ferrera, where he studied law from 1489 to1494. There he also started to study Latin and Greek language and literature. When his father died in 1500, Ariosto assumed for some years the management of family estates as the eldest of 10 children. In 1502 he became commander of the fort of Canossa, and the next year he entered the service of Cardinal Ippolito d'Este. In 1513 Ariosto met Alessandra Benucci. After the death of her husband, Tito Strozzi, she became Ariosto's mistress.

Because the family had settled comfortably in Ferrara, Ariosto refused to accompany Cardinal d'Este to Hungary, and entered the service of Alfonso I, Duke of Ferrara, the Cardinal's brother. In 1522 he was sent to govern the Garfagnana region in the wildest part of the Apuan Alps. He returned after three years from the bandit-ridden post to Ferrara.

In about 1505 Ariosto began writing Orlando Furioso. The poem was a continuation of Matteo Maria Boiardo's Orlando Innamorato. Its first edition appeared in Venice in 1516 and was later revised in 1521 and 1532. The main character, Orlando, goes mad (furioso) because his love for the beautiful Angelica is not returned. Other themes are the war between Christians and Saracens, and the secondary love story of Ruggiero and Bradamante. Orlando Furioso presented a rich variety of characters, mixed romance, epic, and lyrical poetry, and made fun of outmoded chivalric manners. Later the poem had a profound influence on such poets as Tasso, Spenser, and Lope de Vega. It also fascinated artists, and in the mid-1700s G.B. Tiepolo painted in Villa Valmarana in Vicenza frescoes illustrating its scenes.

Ariosto also wrote seven satires, beginning in 1514, and five comedies. As a member of a group organized to produce plays by Plautus and Terrence at the Este court of Ferrara, he became especially familiar with their approaches to comedy, and their work later became the model for his own dramas. In LA CASSARIA (The Coffer, prose version in 1508, verse version in 1531) two servants succeed in arranging desirable marriages for their masters. IL SUPPOSITI (The Pretenders, prose version 1509, verse version 1528/31) was based on Terence's The Eunuch and Plautus's The Captives. Shakespeare used parts of the work in his play The Taming of the Shrew. IL NEGROMANTE (The Necromancer, 1520), centred on a marriage kept secret, GLI STUDENTI (The Students, 1519), was an unfinished comedy of frustrated love, and LA LENA (Lena, 1528) was based on the story of Peronella in Boccaccio's Decameron.

Around 1527 Ariosto secretly married the widow Alessandra Benucci, and spent the last part of his life revising and enlarging Orlando Furioso. Ariosto died in Ferrara on July 6, 1533.

Degli uomini son vari gli appetiti;
a chi piace la chierca a chi la spada,
a chi la patria, a chi gli strani liti.

Che vuole andare a torno, a torno vada;
vegga Inghilterra, Ongheria, Francia e Spagna;
a me piace abitar la mia contrada.

(from Mal può dirar il rosignuolo in gabbia)

For further reading: King of the Court Poets: A Study of the Work, Life and Times of Lodovico Ariosto by E.G. Gardner (1906, new edition in 1982); Ariosto, Shakespeare, and Corneille by B. Croce (1920); Vita di Ludovico Ariosto ricostruita su nuovi documenti by M. Catalano (1931); Sul teatro dell' Ariosto by C. Grabher (1946); Ludovico Ariosto by R. Griffin (1974); Ludovico Ariosto: An Annotated Bibliography of Criticism, 1956-1980 by Robert J. Rodini, Salvatore di Maria (1984); Ariosto's Bitter Harmony by Albert Russell Ascoli (1987) The Poetics of Ariosto by Marianne G. Shapiro (1988); The Orlando Legend in Nineteenth-Century French Literature by D.A. Kress (1996); Orlando Furioso: A Stoic Comedy by Clare Carroll (1997)

Books by Ludovico Ariosto