Completing the Virgilian Marriage Plot: Ariosto and the Broken Flowers of Epic

Abstract

This paper explores the continuation of the Virgilian marriage plot in works such as Mapheus Vegius's Supplement to Virgil's Aeneid, showing how the reintegration of erotic love and dynastic marriage responds to particular cultural concerns of the late medieval and early modern period. My argument culminates in a reading of Ariosto's treatment of this late-Virgilian legacy, focusing narrowly on his complex revision of one of Virgil's signature themes: the eroticized death of a young warrior. In light of this material, I argue that Brandimarte emerges in Ariosto's poem as a crucial figure whose eroticized death signals a decisive shift towards a Virgilian fragmentation of love and duty, and away from the compromise formations of Vegius's romance ending. The entombment of Brandimarte with his beloved Fiordiligi casts a long shadow over the dynastic marriage that closes the poem, prefiguring not only Ruggiero's premature death but also the mutual imbrication of marriage and violence in this early modern context.