Angelica, the shape of desire in contemporary literature

Abstract

The aim of the article is to demonstrate how the beautiful heroine of Ludovico Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso continued after the Renaissance to charm the collective imagination, becoming a successful literary myth. Above all, during the 20th and the 21st century Angelica, incarnation of unreachable desire, grows more and more complex, taking on all the contradictions and inconsistencies of the present day. A previously evanescent creature, she becomes a flesh and blood woman, victim of her own selfishness and of a regained corporeality. In an age of crisis of values, things couldn’t be different. A comparative reading of the novels which – whether consciously or unconsciously –summon Ariosto’s character goes to show that every writer, through their book, creates a new Angelica, perfectly recognisable but ever original and different from the others. All of them however, just like the first, are perturbing figures who strongly influence the surrounding reality.