The opening of IX. THE ORLANDO FURIOSO
Orlando Furioso and Divina Commedia--Ariosto expresses
the Renaissance as Dante the Middle Ages--Definition of
Romantic, Heroic, Burlesque, Heroic-comic, and Satiric
Poems--Ariosto's Bias toward Romance--Sense of Beauty in the
Cinque Cento--Choice of Boiardo's unfinished Theme--The
Propriety of this Choice--Ariosto's Irony and Humor--The
Subject of the Furioso--Siege of Paris--Orlando's
Madness--Loves of Ruggiero and Bradamante--Flattery of the
House of Este--The World of Chivalry--Ariosto's Delight in
the Creatures of his Fancy--Close Structure of the
Poem--Exaggeration of Motives--Power of
Picture-painting--Faculty of Vision--Minute
Description--Rhetorical Amplification--Rapidity of
Movement--Solidity--Nicety of Ethical Analysis--The
Introductions to the Cantos--Episodes and
Novelle--Imitations of the Classics--Power of
Appropriation and Transmutation--Irony--Astolfo's Journey to
the Moon--Ariosto's Portrait--S. Michael in the
Monastery--The Cave of Sleep--Humor--Pathos and
Sublimity--Olimpia and Bireno--Conception of Female
Character--The Heroines--Passion and Love--Ariosto's
Morality--His Style--The Epithet of Divine--Exquisite
Finish--Ariosto and Tasso--Little
Landscape-Painting--Similes--Realism--Adaptation of Homeric
Images--Ariosto's Relation to his Age.