Orlando Furioso: A Romantic Epic: Part 1 (Penguin Classics) (Pt. 1) [Paperback]

Ludovico Ariosto (Author), Barbara Reynolds (Translator)

Book Description

Series: Penguin Classics | Publication Date: August 30, 1975

One of the greatest epic poems of the Italian Renaissance, Orlando Furioso is an intricate tale of love and enchantment set at the time of the Holy Roman Emperor Charlemagne's conflict with the Moors. When Count Orlando returns to France from Cathay with the captive Angelica as his prize, her beauty soon inspires his cousin Rinaldo to challenge him to a duel - but during their battle, Angelica escapes from both knights on horseback and begins a desperate quest for freedom. This dazzling kaleidoscope of fabulous adventures, sorcery and romance has inspired generations of writers - including Spenser and Shakespeare - with its depiction of a fantastical world of magic rings, flying horses, sinister wizardry and barbaric splendour.

Editorial Reviews

Language Notes

Text: English (translation)

About the Author

Ludovico Ariosto (1474-1533) Italian poet, remembered primarily for his Orlando Furioso, published in its final version in 1532.

Product Details

• Paperback: 832 pages
• Publisher: Penguin Classics (August 30, 1975)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0140443118
• ISBN-13: 978-0140443110
• Product Dimensions: 7.8 x 5.2 x 2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #459,149 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

54 of 59 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Reynold's is one of the classic English translations, April 26, 2001

By 

Laon (moon-lit Surry Hills) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Orlando Furioso: A Romantic Epic: Part 1 (Penguin Classics) (Pt. 1) (Paperback)

I may not have been the only person to have noticed how much the poetry improves in the last half of _Paradiso_ in the Dorothy Sayers translation. This is because Sayers died before completing the last of her translation of the _Divina Commedia_, and her devoted friend and admirer Barbara Reynolds took over. But where Sayers had been technically impressive in matching Dante's terza rima, but pedestrian in the poetry, at the point where (as I guess) Reynolds takes over a new lightness of touch and poetic feel for the language makes itself felt.

This Ariosto translation is Reynolds' great achievement. Moreover it is one of the three or four greatest literary translations in English, an achievement to stand beside Dryden's _Aeniad_ and Fairfax's _Gerusalemma Liberata_. (On Pope's _Illiad_, which I'm currently reading, I tend to agree with the contemporary reviewer who commented, "A very pretty poem, Mr Pope, but you must not call it Homer".)

She captures Ariosto's wit and lightness, occasionally turning in closing couplets for her stanzas that are as sharp as Byron's in _Don Juan_ (who was in turn also using Ariosto - among others - as a model), but also following Ariosto in allowing the sense to flow from stanza to stanza in a quite un-Byronic way. As well, she manages to transmit Ariosto's graver passages in equally dignified verse, for example some of the set pieces imitated (by Ariosto) from Homer. English readers tend to think of Ottava Rima as a vehicle for comic verse, but in Italian it is a model for epic. It's just that the great Italian epic tradition, unlike the English epic tradition before Byron's great anti-epic, includes humour.

As for Ariosto, he is a great poet and story-teller, and (not exactly a literary judgment, this) his authorial "voice" is one whose company you cannot help enjoying. His humour, sometimes sly, is also warmly compassionate; sometimes satirical, sometimes splendidly and deliberately silly. Ariosto knows his flying horses, invisibility rings, sexy sorceresses and the rest are perfectly absurd, but manages to maintain the fantasy elements as wonderful and exciting, without ever undercutting them with mere cynicism or bathos. But most often the humour is warm and character-based.

His story has an astonishing range of characters, the Moorish warriors and their lovers depicted as fairly and favourably as his Christian protegonists, and an astonish sweep, all over Europe and the East, with digressions to the Moon and other enchanted places.

Another feature of Ariosto is his feminism, which shows in his warrior women, who give and take in battle every bit as well as the men. He also tellingly mocks some of the anti-feminist aspects of chivalry, as in the scene where one of Ariosto's heroes is called upon to champion in a trial by combat a woman who has been accused of unchastity. The hero readily agrees to defend the woman's honour, but only after observing that he would as readily defend her if she were unchaste, as in his view (clearly also Ariosto's) women have a right to make love without being condemned for it.

Two last observations. First, I believe that this poem, and not Dante's, is the great Italian epic, superior to Dante for the same reason that Shakespeare is superior to Racine, or Byron's English epic is superior to Milton's or even Spencer's. Dante offers moral allegory (though with a thoroughly repellant worldview), and Ariosto's failure to preach has sometimes been taken as a sign of lack of depth or seriousness. But the great epics are about humanity, not allegory (though I have seen attempts to allegorise Homer, none have done so convincingly); and Ariosto presents one of the widest and greatest human canvases of all epic. It is the most readable long poem since the _Odyssey_. Yes.

Second, Amazon has linked this translation to another, a prose translation. I haven't read the prose translation, but I would observe that _Orlando Furioso_ is a poem. To render it as something else is to lose its structure, its purpose and its very nature. To present a prose translation of this poem as a genuine "version of Ariosto" is a bit like presenting Beethoven's Ninth symphony by playing an arrangement for kazoo: some of Beethoven will come through in a kazoo transcription, but you cannot call it the Ninth. Get the Reynolds; it is a great and easy _read_, and it is one of the glories of English poetic translation.

Cheers!

Laon

21 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Tolkien meets Ben Jonson, January 8, 1997

By A Customer

This review is from: Orlando Furioso: A Romantic Epic: Part 1 (Penguin Classics) (Pt. 1) (Paperback)

This renaissance romance combines elements of the adventure story along the lines of J. R. R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings trilogy with satire in the tradition of Lucien, Ben Jonson, and Jonathan Swift. Barbara Reynolds' verse translation is well paced, easy to read, and displays a rich use of language. Be aware, though, that this is a two volume translation and the catalog, as of 1-9-97, shows only the first volume is available from Amazon. The prose translation from Oxford University Press is complete in one volume, but is not as easy to read in that it suffers from very small print and a language that is not as vigorous as that of the Reynold's translation. J. D. Wilson, Jr.

13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A delightful giant, September 19, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: Orlando Furioso: A Romantic Epic: Part 1 (Penguin Classics) (Pt. 1) (Paperback)

Ariosto was one of the giants of Renaissance literature, and this was his footprint. Grand, touching, funny, witty, stirring -- as Dryden said of Chaucer, here is the world's plenty. Some of the greatest poets of the next two centuries (Tasso, Spenser, Milton) explicitly attempted to overdo him, and only sometimes succeeded; Byron took as much from Ariosto as he did from Pulci.

But don't read this on that account. Read it because it's a delight from start to finish. War, love, and chivalry are the poet's themes, and they're here in all their forms.

I don't know Italian, but everyone I've asked who would know assures me Reynolds's translation captures not just the essence but the spirit of the original.

(Ignore the reviews that claim that this is a prose translation -- they are from another translation.)