Chapter VII: Book I: mentions the Cyclops, Circe, Thyestes, Medusa, the Centaurs,

Vulcan, Atalanta, the dragon’s teeth, and Hercules; Book II, a faun, the easy descent to Hades, the god of love, Pasithea, Narcissus, the Laestrigonians and Anthropophagi, the goddess Fame, Arion, and the Sibyl. Hector’s arms are brought in as a piece of medieval derivation from Troy. Classical similes are inserted here and there, as if conscientiously: the meeting of two winds, fire in grain, a boar or bear at bay, two bulls or two lions. Nor does Boiardo strive for other ornament. His heightening is rather the sheer extravagance of epic brag.

Their blows were heard nearly a mile in the wood (I. iii. 59).

They came with such a battle-cry as made earth tremble, and sky
and sea (I. iv. 51).

The moat brimmed with the blood of the slain (I. xi. 32).

Fire came to his heart and his face, and flamed from his
helmet. He ground his teeth. His knees so clamped Brigliadoro
that the mighty steed sank in the path (I. xv. 19).

The grinding of his teeth could be heard more than a bow-shot
(I. xv. 33).

Otherwise his words are usually as simple as Malory’s. So far, classicism has made no headway in Renaissance verse narrative.

Boiardo’s sentences, as Malory’s, are typically aggregative, sometimes even crude. Instead of tightening a sentence or a stanza, he remains frankly diffuse. Fluent, sometimes slack, he runs on as if orally. His verse is pleasantly varied. Though he hardly ever lets a line end with a down-beat, he freely begins either up or down, or shifts to a dactyl. A stanza rarely runs over; but it is often linked with the next by refrain, as in popular poetry. Here and there the closing line of his octave sounds like an experiment in the direction followed later by Spenser. Inferior in stanza control to Boccaccio and to Ariosto, diffuse, somewhat careless, he is always agreeably and sometimes charmingly fluent.

Yet description, which became a regular Renaissance cue for dilation, Boiardo handles economically. Even where he is conventional he does not dilate; and usually he is both distinct and concise.

That spring was all adorned with white and polished alabaster,
and so richly with gold that it shone in the flowery mead (I.
iii. 33).

A fair rich palace made of marble polished so smooth as to
mirror the whole garden (I. viii. 2).

Secret gardens of fresh verdure are above on the roofs and
hidden on the ground. Gems and gold pattern all these noble and
joyous places. Clear springs unstintingly fresh are surrounded
by shady thickets. Above all, the place has an odor to give
oppressed hearts their joy again (I. viii. 5).

His stories pictured on walls (_depintura istoriata_) whether fresco or mosaic, have a literary source. They are from the Troy stories pictured on the walls of Dido’s palace in _Aeneid_ II. Boiardo’s briefer rendering may have been suggested by the “epigrams” of the Greek _Anthology_, or by survivals in southern Italy of such pictures with verse inscriptions. Certainly his palaces and gardens often recall the Norman-Arab art of Sicily. For it is art that he pauses to note oftener than scenery. In all this his classicism is both discreet and artistic. He does not borrow; he adapts.

The larger scene, the field of the traditional struggle of East with West, receives more definite geography. The haze over medieval Ermonie had been often pierced by merchant voyagers. Though there are still the Isole Felice or Lontane, we read now of Aragon and Barcelona, Granada, Toledo, Seville, Valencia, and Gibraltar; of Agrigentum and Mongibello as well as of Sicily at large; of Cyprus, Crete, and Rhodes; of Aigues Mortes, Bordeaux, Gascony, Languedoc, Perpignan, and Roussillon; of Damascus, Niniveh, Trebizond, and Tripoli.

The traditional chivalric equality of Saracen knights with Christian, as in Malory, is emphasized.

King Charles the Great with genial face had seated himself
among his paladins at the round table. Before him were also
Saracens, who would not use chair nor bench, but lay like
mastiffs on their rugs, scorning the usage of the Franks (I. i.
12-13).

The paynim king Balugante, divining Rinaldo’s irritation
at some of his fellow Christians, sends him a courteous
and discerning message. Saracen knights are armed, titled,
respected as are Christian, and mingle with them freely. Their
bravery is not merely admitted; Rodomonte is a legendary demon
of force, and Ruggiero in his pagan days is a pattern of both
force and courtesy.

The traditional echoes of folklore are repeated. Feraguto’s strength revives when he touches earth. A child stolen in infancy is recognized. Herbs are gathered under a new moon. Ruggiero, as Percival, is brought up beyond sight of arms. There are waters of forgetfulness, a loathly lady waiting to be restored by a kiss, a magic steed, a white hart, a monster adversary transformed, and a retreat under water.

Grotesque interludes, barely touched by Malory, found occasionally elsewhere, and quite regular in Italian popular versions, are not only admitted by Boiardo; they are dwelt upon with evident relish. Thus Rinaldo fights with a giant.

Of no avail the furious assault; of no avail the baron’s nimble
skill. He could not reach so high. Suddenly Rinaldo dismounted
and with one bound leapt upon the giant’s croup when he was
not looking. He knocked his helm and his steel cap to pieces
and, redoubling his strokes as if he were hammering iron at the
furnace, he split the great head in two. Fell the giant with a
rush that made the earth shake (I. iv. 64-65).

Orlando leapt even higher, so that again and again he met his giant face to face—in the air. Angelica threw into a monster’s mouth a cake that stuck his teeth together, so that Rinaldo might safely, though with enormous effort, strangle him. Rodomonte bare-headed at sea hears his hair rattle with ice. Astolfo is beguiled to board a whale, and Rinaldo follows, both on horseback.

On Bayard he plunged into the sea after the great fish in
desperation. That whale went slowly, slowly; for it is very
large and by nature grave (II. xiii. 65).

Marfisa, the woman knight, had her horse stolen and pursued the thief long in vain. The conception is grotesque; the execution, pure farce.

A fortnight had she followed him, nor was fed meantime on
aught but leaves. The false thief, who was most astute, sped
his flight with quite different food. For he was so quick and
so bold that every tavern he saw he would enter and fall to
eating, and then flee without paying his shot. And although the
taverners and their waiters were after him with their pitchers
and jugs in their hands, off he was, wiping his mouth and
grinning (II. xv. 68-69).

Love, announced in the title _Orlando innamorato_ and frequently asserted, has little more scope in Boiardo than in Malory. Whether the title expresses an original intention abandoned, or an appeal to court ladies, or merely a certain period in the hero’s life, Boiardo’s interest was elsewhere.

Long time Morgan, Alcina, and their magic wiles have kept me
waiting; nor have I shown you a good sword-stroke (II. xiv. 1).

The good sword-stroke is what he gives with both hands, even as Malory.

Since the main interest is single combat, and all the fighters, even the Saracens, are memorable, there is a long roll of persons. Of the hundred mentioned in the first five cantos about a third never reappear; few are characterized consecutively; none is consecutively in action for any considerable period. The long poem is frankly a series, not a sequence. Boiardo’s usual method is to carry one of his stories to a crisis, leave it to pick up another, and so on.

Let us now return to Astolfo, who remained, you know, alone at
the fountain (I. ii. 17).[36]

As the Carolingian recitals on the piazza, or behind the marionettes, the _Orlando innamorato_ may be entered at almost any point. What is there heard or read is interesting mainly for itself, very little as arising from previous action and characterization or as preparing for what follows. To say, then, that it fuses the two cycles is quite misleading. Boiardo brings in an Arthurian name, Tristan or Lancelot, as simply as he adds another Carolingian. He puts Merlin’s well in the forest of Ardenne. He interpolates Morgan le Fay among the Orlando stories. But fusion, whether of these Arthurians or of his own Carolingians, is not in all his thoughts. He is engaged not in composing the Carolingian story, but in rehearsing the Carolingian stories.

Boiardo’s _Orlando_, then, is a collection of heroes fighting in the struggle between East and West. Within that frame, as within the frame of Arthur’s Round Table, tradition had collected many stories. Boiardo finds room for them, and even for others quite unrelated. Those of the greatest knights, Orlando, Rinaldo, Oliver, and their ladies and friends, the obligatory stories, he can tell by installments because they are familiar and have been already connected. The others he inserts here and there for variety. Not only does he accept the medieval cyclical aggregation, he ignores the later medieval achievement of narrative sequence in smaller scope through characterization.

A certain Tisbina, who has nothing to do with Charlemagne, is in much the same dilemma as Chaucer’s Dorigen in the Franklin’s Tale; and her Iroldo’s response is much the same as that of Dorigen’s Arveragus. Chaucer’s solution is convincing, in spite of impossible marvels, because it is motivated by Dorigen’s character. Boiardo’s solution is inferior because it is quite extraneous and casual. His Tisbina is not characterized sufficiently to motivate the story toward any convincing issue.

Much less is Boiardo concerned to motivate his whole story. His Orlando in love is even removed for long stretches from the great struggle; and Boiardo interrupts both the love and the struggle to tell of Tisbina and Iroldo or insert a _fabliau_.[37] True, his poem remained unfinished; but evidently he had no idea of making it a coherent whole. His Latin and Greek did not suggest to him the shaping of verse narrative. Discernible in his style, though never intrusive, they do not move his composition; for composition was not his concern. Ignoring alike the medieval progress and Pulci’s narrative cleverness with his own material, he was content with abundant activity, variety, and fluency.

But in another use of the classics he forecast the Renaissance habit of encomium. Ruggiero, legendary ancestor of his Ferrara patrons, brought up in paganism and remote from deeds of arms, is sought by Agramante for his great expedition against the Christian West. Ruggiero’s aged tutor warns Agramante against the ultimate consequences of taking the marvelous youth into France. Charlemagne, he says, may be defeated, and our pride and courage enhanced;

... but afterward the youth will become Christian, and—ah!
traitress house of Maganza, which heaven should not tolerate on
earth—in the end Ruggiero shall have through thee his death.

Would that were the final grief! But his descendants shall
remain Christian, and come to honor as great as any the world
knows today. They shall keep all, all generosity, all courtesy,
sweet love and joyous state in a house the flower of the world.

I see Hugo Alberto di Sansogna descend to the Paduan plain,
expert in arms, in intellect, in all the ways of glory,
generous, noble, and above all humane. Hear, ye Italians: I
warrant you. He who comes with that standard in hand brings
with him all your redemption. Through him shall Italy be filled
with prowess.

I see Azzo I and Aldobrandino III, nor know which to call the
greater; for the one has killed the traitor Anzolino; the other
has broken the Emperor Henry. Behold another Rinaldo paladin. I
say no more of him than Lord of Vicenza, of Treviso, of Verona,
who strikes the crown from Frederick.

Nature shows forth her treasure. Lo! the marquis who lacks no
point of honor. Blest the age, and happy they who shall live in
a world so free! In his time the golden lilies shall be joined
to that white eagle whose home is in heaven; and his domain
shall be the flower of Italy from the one fair seacoast to the
other.

And if the other son of Amphitryon, who there appears in habit
of a duke, has as much mind to seize dominion as he has to
follow good and flee evil, all the birds—not to say the men who
act in this great play—would flock to obey him. But why should
I gaze further into the future? Thou destroyest Africa, King
Agramante (II. xxi. 54-59).

With reminiscence, perhaps, of Dante, this is obviously patterned on Vergil. The historical vision of the house of Este has its model in the vision of the Augustans. Encomium with Boiardo is neither so frequent nor so fulsome as it was to become with Ariosto and with Spenser. Was that, perhaps, one reason for his double eclipse? He was first superseded by Ariosto and then rewritten by Berni.

7. ARIOSTO

The brilliant _Orlando furioso_ (1516) of Ludovico Ariosto (1474-1533) is one of the most typical verse narratives of the Renaissance, as it was the most popular. More accomplished than Boiardo in diction, verse, and composition, and more responsive to the Renaissance, Ariosto still follows the same serial plan. The two poets differ more in degree than in kind. Both were trained in the classics; both began by writing Latin; both offer romance as inspiring contrast with actuality.

O great hearts of those ancient knights! They were rivals;
they differed in religion; they still felt the rude and wicked
strokes aching throughout their bodies; and yet through dark
woods and crooked paths they went together without distrust (i.
22).

[War has been debased through the diabolical invention of
artillery (xi. 22-25)]. How foundest thou ever place in human
hearts, O invention criminal and ugly! Through thee military
glory has been destroyed, through thee the craft of arms
dishonored, through thee valor and prowess so diminished that
oft the knave seems better than the good soldier.

And though Rinaldo was not very rich in cities or treasure,
he was so affable and genial and so prompt to share with them
whatever he had that not one of his meinie was drawn away by
offer of more gold. A man of Montauban never forsakes it unless
great need constrains him elsewhere (xxxi. 57).

O famished, deformed, fierce Harpies, who in blinded and
misguided Italy, perhaps as punishment of ancient sins, bring
to every table divine judgment! Innocent children and faithful
mothers drop with hunger while they see one feast of these foul
monsters devour what might have kept them alive.... [Italy
cries] Is there no one of you ... to free your tables from the
filth and the claws ... as the paladin freed that of the Ethiop
king? (xxxvi. 1-3).

Encomium with Ariosto becomes pervasive. Animated of course by the personal ends of a court poet, it serves also the literary end of magnificence, the first aspect in which the Renaissance viewed epic.

Who will give me the voice and the words fit for a subject so
noble? Who will lend me wings strong enough to attain my lofty
conception? Far greater than its customery heat must be the
poetic furor in my breast. For this part I owe my lord, since
it sings of the noble line from which he sprang.

Among the illustrious lords issued from heaven to govern the
earth, never seest thou, O Phoebus who surveyest the wide
earth, a race more glorious in peace or in war, nor any whose
nobility has been kept longer, and shall be kept, if that
prophetic light which inspires me errs not, so long as the
heavens revolve about the pole (iii. 1-2).

The Vergilian vision of Augustan Rome is heard again in Merlin’s prophecy. Epic rolls of honor muster the English warriors, the women of Este, even the painters. Besides these are many incidental references, especially at canto openings.

Of courtesy, of nobility, examples among the ancient warriors
were many, and few are there among the moderns. But of impious
ways enough was seen and heard in that war, Hippolito, whose
captured standards thou hast used to adorn our temples, as thou
broughtest to thy ancestral shores their captive galleys laden
with prey (xxxvi. 2).

The mission of the poet to confer fame, proclaimed by Ariosto and repeated by Ronsard, is also seen in bitter contrast. The speaker is St John the Evangelist.

So worthy men are snatched from oblivion worse than death by
poets. O intelligent and wise princes who follow the example
of Augustus in making writers your friends, and thus need not
fear the waves of Lethe. Poets, as singing swans, are rare,
poets not unworthy of the name; for heaven prevents too great
abundance of famous ones by the great fault of stingy lords,
who by oppressing excellence and exalting vice banish the noble
arts. We may suppose that God has deprived these ignorant men
of their wits and darkens their light of reason in making
them shy of poetry, that death may quite consume them. For
wicked as their ways might be, if only they knew how to win
the friendship of Apollo they might rise from their graves in
sweeter odor than nard or myrrh.

Aeneas was not so pious, nor Achilles so mighty, as their fame,
nor Hector so brave. There have been thousands and thousands
who might with truth have been put before them; but the palaces
or great villas bestowed by their descendants have given them
sublime honors without end at the honored hands of writers.
Augustus was neither so holy nor so benign as sounds the
trumpet of Vergil; but his having good taste in poetry brings
him pardon for his unjust proscription. Nor would he who had
against him earth and hell have the less fame, perhaps, if he
knew how to keep the writers his friends.

Homer made Agamemnon victorious, the Trojans cowardly and dull,
and Penelope constant to her husband through the thousand
persecutions of the suitors. If you wish to uncover the truth,
convert the story to its contrary; that the Greeks were routed,
Troy the victor, and Penelope a harlot. On the other hand hear
how fame leaves Dido, whose heart was so chaste, to be reputed
a baggage, only because Vergil was not her friend. Wonder not
that I am oppressed thereat, and that I speak of it at such
length. I love writers and pay them what I owe; for in your
world I too was a writer (xxxv. 22-28).

This strange parenthesis of satire, dubious in its humor, shocking in its irreverence, sounds today like encomium reduced to advertisement. It sounds also like the bitter retort of realism to that fiction of the courtier which was to have literary vogue through Castiglione. Bitter and foul the actual wars of Italy in contrast to old chivalry; but bitter also the trade of those who sing them.

Though often oratorical, Ariosto rarely seeks his magnificence by elaboration of style. He has too much taste, too much concern for popular appeal. He even admits the appeal of the traditional epic brag. Rodomonte alone sacks a city; Grifone throws a knight over the wall; great rocks are hurled from ships; and—triumph of rodomontade—the fragments of a combat fly up to the sphere of fire and come down lighted.

There are a few reminiscences of the _Aeneid_, fewer of Horace, fewest of Dante and Petrarch. Classical allusion has become a common decoration. Aurora is already obligatory for dawn. Occasionally a classical periphrasis (“Hardly had the Licaonian seed turned her plow through the furrows of heaven” xx. 82) is obscure; or there is incongruity in combining Avernus and the Sibyl with Merlin’s grotto, or the Fates with Death, Nature, and St John. But allusion is neither paraded nor often intruded. Classical similes, much more frequent than with Boiardo, are evidently sought for decoration. They are one of the signs that Ariosto’s time thought of epic in terms of style. But they are used also for vividness; and they range widely. Besides those drawn conventionally from beasts of prey or from storm, there are many quite sharply individual: wood steaming in a fire, grass ebbing and flowing in the wind, a pile-driver, and a mine cave-in. Ariosto’s decoration is rarely a hindrance, rarely even elaborate. He is easy to read. The bearing of a passage here and there may be dubious because of looseness in the narrative, but never its meaning. He has reconciled dignity with popularity. Instead of posing as literary, he makes his readers feel literary themselves. He puts them at ease in fine company.

In sentence and stanza movement Ariosto has made his poem easy to read by diffuse and various fluency. Writing for entertainment, he uses balance or other word-play only as occasional means of variety. He is neither sententious nor pretentious. His metrical skill, remarkable in range and control, is not put forward for exhibition; it is an accompaniment so flexible to mood as constantly to enhance the connotation. Rarely lengthening the final line of the stanza often using refrain to link stanzas, and sometimes within stanzas, he is most characteristic in making the _ottava rima_ run on not only from line to line, but from stanza to stanza. This fluent ease is by no means impromptu spontaneity. It is the work of ten years. His diffuseness, then, is not carelessness; it is adjustment alike to the immediate audience of the court and to the increasing readers of the press.

Especially significant, therefore, is his handling of description. His landscape is often both brief and conventional.

Winsome thickets of pleasant laurel, of palms and gayest
myrtle, of cedar, of orange with fruit and flowers woven in
forms most various and all beautiful, make a refuge from the
fervid heat of summer days with their thick parasols; and among
these branches in safe flight nightingales go singing.

Among the purpled roses and the white lilies, which the warm
air keeps ever fresh, rabbits and hares are seen at peace, and
deer, heads high and proud, without fear that any one may kill
or take them, feed or chew their cud at rest. Swift and nimble
leap the harts and goats that abound in those country places
(vi. 21-2).

But he has a way of animating convention with a sharp word of his own.

When the trembling brooks (_trepidi ruscelli_) began to loosen
the cold ice in their warm waves (xii. 72).

Architecture and decoration often remain generalized, or offer few details. Ampler is pageantry.

With triumphal pomp and great festivity they return together
into the city, which is green with branches and garlands.
All the streets are hung with tapestries. A shower of herbs
and flowers spreads from above and falls upon and around the
victors, cast in handfuls from loggias and fair windows by
ladies and damsels.

In various places where they turn a corner they find improvised
arches and trophies displaying pictures of the ruins and fires
of Biserta and other worthy deeds; elsewhere, balconies with
divers games and spectacles and mimes and plays; and at every
corner is inscribed the true title: To the Liberators of the
Empire.

With sound of shrill trumpets and mellow clarinets, with
harmony of every instrument, mid laughter and applause, joy and
favor of the people, who could hardly come close enough, the
great Emperor dismounted at the palace, where several days that
company stayed to enjoy itself with tournaments, _personnages_
and farces, dances and banquets (xliv. 32-34).

This is a preciously distinct picture of actual Renaissance pageantry. More vividly detailed is the funeral of Brandimarte. Even these, however, are not dilated. They are appropriate to their narrative function. The long descriptive summary of Astolfo’s journey through the Valley of the Moon is an interlude of satire; and Orlando’s battle with the monster Orc is pure grotesque. He rows into the Orc’s mouth, casts anchor there, and, when the monster plunges, tows him ashore. Moreover, both these are narrated; neither is a descriptive pause.

Ariosto does pause, however, to dilate description of the beauty of women. Seven stanzas enumerate the charms of the enchantress Alcina (vii. 10-16).

The fair palace excelled not so much in surpassing the richness
of every other as in having the most delightful folk in the
world and the noblest. Little did one differ from another in
flowered age and in beauty; only Alcina was most beautiful of
all, as the sun is more beautiful than any star.

In person she was as well formed as the industry of painters
can imagine: her blond hair long and tressed; gold is not more
splendid and lustrous. Rose mingled with hawthorn white spread
over her delicate cheek. Of polished ivory was her joyous
forehead, and of just proportion.

Beneath two black and fine-spun brows are two black eyes, as
two clear suns, sympathetic in gaze, frugal in movement, about
which Love seems to sport and fly, and from which he empties
his quiver and visibly steals hearts. Thence descends a nose in
which Envy herself could find no fault.

Beneath this, as between two valleys, the mouth besprent
with native cinnabar, wherein are two rows of choice pearls,
enclosed or opened by fair, sweet lips, whence issues speech
of courtesy fit to soften even a base heart, and whence rises
the winsome laughter that brings paradise to its place on earth
[and so on for three more stanzas].

This is the conventional description called by the Middle Age _blason_. It is used again for Olimpia bound to the rock, where the situation itself is conventional. A bit of very old folklore, and coming down also through classical mythology as Perseus and Andromeda, it was a commonplace for dilation.

But what Ariosto dilates oftenest is emotion. His characteristic pauses are lyric. Thus he interpolates the medieval _compleint d’amour_ not only again and again, but for long exhalations. Bradamante alone utters a whole series of these laments. The second begins as follows:

Then shall it be true (said she) that I must seek him who
flees me and hides? Then must I prize him who scorns me? Must
I implore him who never answers me? Shall I endure to hold at
heart him who hates me, who thinks his qualities so rare that
an immortal goddess must descend from heaven to kindle his
heart with love?

In his pride he knows that I love him, that I adore him; nor
will he of me for lover nor for slave. In his cruelty he knows
that I yearn and die for him; and he waits till after death to
give me help. And lest I tell him of my martyrdom, fit to move
even his stubborn will, he hides himself from me, as the asp
who to keep her venom refuses to hear the charm.

Ah! Love, stay him who hastes so free beyond my slow running,
or restore me to the state whence thou hast taken me, when
I was subject neither to thee nor to any other. Alas! how
deceitful and foolish is my hope that ever prayers should move
thee to pity! For thou delightest to draw streams of tears from
our eyes; nay, thereon thou feedest and livest (xxxii. 18-20).

Substantially the same is the famous madness of Orlando. Though Ariosto cleverly gives it narrative enough to relieve its prolongation through twenty-five stanzas, it is a dilated lyric interlude.

The art that dilates these lyrics is rhetoric. Thus they answer not only the learning, but the taste of the Renaissance. With Alcina’s charms and Olimpia’s, they were the favorite passages of the Pléiade. Ronsard, using them often, was especially fond of Orlando’s madness. Beyond the Pléiade, they open a long vista toward Italian opera. To look the other way, back to the Middle Age, is to meet the sharp contradiction of Dante. Paolo and Francesca, or Ugolino, is the poetic antithesis to Bradamante and Orlando.

Such dilated interludes would interrupt any progress of the whole story; and they are not the only interpolations. Traditionally the cyclical romances might pause to add incidental stories, usually told by errant damsels seeking help. Ariosto inserts these freely, and quite as freely others having even less relevance. The story of Ginevra, Ariodante, and Polinesso (Canto V), for instance, though it falls among Rinaldo’s adventures, has its own intrigue and motivation. Equally separable, the _fabliau_ of Fiammetta is told for sex, and prolonged by appended dialogue and comment. “Ladies,” it begins, “and you who hold ladies in esteem, for heaven’s sake give no ear to this story.... Omit this canto; for my story needs it not and will be no less clear without it.” Evidently Ariosto has not planned his cantos as chapters.

A mere glance through the summaries prefixed to each canto will show that the many interruptions are not breaks in the sequence of the whole. There is no such sequence. The poem is a collection of parallel stories taken up in turn, and only thus combined, not integrated in a single scheme. Accepting Boiardo’s method, he uses the same frank transitions.

But to another time I will defer the story of what ensued from
this. I must return to the good King Charles, against whom
Rodomonte was coming in haste and whose folk he was killing
(xviii. 8).

He even turns them to humor.

I am reminded that I ought to tell you (I promised to, and then
I forgot) of a suspicion that the fair lady of the grieving
Ruggiero had concerning the other lady less pleasing and more
wicked and of sharper and more venomous tooth, so that through
what she heard from Ricciardetto it devoured the heart in her
breast.

I should have told you, and I began something else because
Rinaldo intervened; and then Guidone gave me enough to do,
so that he held me off a bit on the way. From one thing
to another I became so involved that I hardly remembered
Bradamante. I remember her now, and I am going to go on with
her story before I tell of Rinaldo and Gradasso.

Before I speak of her, need is that I speak a bit of Agramante
(xxxii. 1-3).

Such narrative art as Ariosto exhibits is in detail, not in the onwardness of the whole story. The close is both interrupted and delayed.