Exercices furieux: A partir de l'edition de l'Orlando furioso De Franceschi (Venise, 1584). Ed. by ILARIA ANDREOLI.

Abstract

In this edited volume ilaria andreoli collects the proceedings of the study day Autour de l'edition de l'Orlando furioso De Franceschi (Venise, 1584) held at the University of Caen-Basse Normandie in 2011. This symposium gathered together experts on the history of the book, art historians, and literary historians to discuss Ludovico Ariosto's Orlando furioso, using as their starting point the 1584 edition published in Venice by Francesco De Franceschi. In her acknowledgements Andreoli states that one of the aims of the study day was to ‘gather together specialists from different backgrounds, training, provenance and age, in order to explore interdisciplinary pathways’—this volume reflects very well these aims. The 1584 Orlando furioso edition is significant as a landmark edition both for the presentation and discussion of Ariosto's poem within Renaissance Italy, but also in its material aspects and paratextual annexes. Using this edition as a starting point, each chapter contributes to the exploration of the reception of the Furioso in Italy and across Europe from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries. The chronological organization of the volume is particularly useful, as it contributes to a tracing of the trajectory of an Italian classic like the Furioso from the critical reception after the death of its author to its wider intersections with the figurative arts, drama, and the literary canon within a European context. After a concise and effective introduction by François Dupuigrenet Desroussilles, Ilaria Andreoli focuses on the fortune of the De Franceschi edition as an iconographic model and considers its location and significance within the activity of the printer, who worked primarily on the publication of illustrated scientific texts, including editions on botany, anatomy, zoology, architecture, and mechanical engineering. For his edition of Orlando Furioso De Franceschi used the text published in the 1556 Valgrisi illustrated edition with the commentary by Geronimo Ruscelli. Andreoli discusses the significance of the illustrations in the 1556 and 1584 editions in their use of perspective for the spatiotemporal organisation of the facts of each canto and their resemblance to cartographic aids in their organization and their indication of first names for each character. The last part of the chapter looks at the fortune of the edition as a model for other sixteenth- and seventeenth-century illustrated editions of literary texts, such as Ovid's Metamorphoses and Torquato Tasso's Gerusalemme liberata.