The Italian Love Poetry of Ludovico Ariosto: Court Culture and Classicism by Giada Guassardo

Abstract

Reviewed by: The Italian Love Poetry of Ludovico Ariosto: Court Culture and Classicism by Giada Guassardo Jane E. Everson The Italian Love Poetry of Ludovico Ariosto: Court Culture and Classicism. By Giada Guassardo. (Biblioteca dell' 'Archivium Romanicum', ser. 1: Storia, Letteratura, Paleografia, 508) Florence: Olschki. 2021. viii+244 pp. €26. ISBN 978–8822–26731–3. This volume, which principally publishes the findings of the author's Oxford D.Phil. thesis, presents an impressively wide-ranging discussion. The title is apt, since although the core of each section of the monograph is constituted by Ariosto's vernacular lyric corpus, the emphasis throughout is on the setting of individual lyrics in a series of relevant contexts: literary—Italian vernacular poetry, especially Petrarch and the subsequent fifteenth- and early sixteenth-century developments; Latin lyric poetry, in particular of the Augustan period; the social and cultural milieux experienced by Ariosto; and the immediately contemporary and biographical factors, especially those related to the Ferrarese court. Thus alongside Ariosto's lyrics the volume quotes liberally from the lyrics of Bembo, Boiardo, Tebaldeo, Serafino Aquilano among contemporary poets, and from Ovid, Propertius, and Catullus for the Latin tradition. The volume is divided into three main sections, each of which is subdivided into a number of subsections which address discrete parts of the argument. A substantial Introduction (pp. 3–30) summarizes the complex situation regarding Ariosto's lyrics and the two main groups into which these fall: the 'canzoniere' for [End Page 261] poems selected by Ariosto with a view to constituting a coherent collection; and the 'rime extravaganti', for those not selected for this collection; the general features of the lyric corpus; and the range of influences to be examined in detail in the volume. The first chapter is then dedicated to Ariosto's Elegiac Self-Fashioning' (pp. 31–83). This is centred on an analysis of four of the capitoli from the 'canzoniere' for which the influence of classical Latin elegy is considered of particular note, while the element of self-fashioning is consistently set alongside the Satire for purposes of comparison and contrast. The subsections discuss 'the tradition of the parting between two lovers', 'love and warfare', 'a poem addressed to Ippolito', 'a mission to Florence', 'the journey to the Garfagnana', and the 'portrait of the lyric speaker as a lover'—and these subheadings aptly underline the historical, political, and biographical dimensions of the lyric poems, while the discussion brings out Ariosto's use of both classical and humanist Latin verse. The second chapter, entitled 'Ariosto, the Lyric Lover' (pp. 85–162), aims to analyse the complex and often ambivalent type, or better types, of lover relationship envisaged by the poet. The discussion here is at times quite dense, partly on account of the number of different approaches and influences considered, and the complex tradition and uncertain chronology of Ariosto's lyrics. The chapter considers 'Love encounters' discussed with reference to both Petrarchan and classical Latin parallels; 'fides and constancy', which engages appropriately with similar arguments in the Orlando furioso; 'the courtly–Petrarchan celebration of women' and 'the flight of the poet: cases of metapoetry'—two sections which deal especially with the relevance of the myths of Icarus and Phaethon for the Ferrarese court and its poets; 'between realism and myth'; and lastly a study of the final poem of the 'canzoniere'. There is undoubtedly a wealth of interesting and thought-provoking information in the sections of this chapter, but at times the desire to include numerous possible parallels and influences detracts from the focus on Ariosto's lyrics, and the force of the argument is lost. Chapter 3, devoted to 'The Portrayal of Women' (pp. 163–215), illustrates what for this reviewer is the chief weakness of the approach used, namely the almost inevitable overlap of material and argument between the three chapters. Chapter 2 already treated aspects of the portrayal of women in discussing the relationship issues, while here the lover and his views arising from his relationships recur. Poems already discussed in previous chapters are treated again, from slightly different perspectives, but it becomes nonetheless difficult to see the wood for the trees—as other texts, by Ariosto and others...