Contents:
Deidier, Nota biobibliografica di C. Princiotta, Milano, Mondadori, , p. Frabotta, Ultime dalla Terra di Nessuno , ivi, p. Frabotta, Eloisa , in Tutte le poesie , cit. Frabotta, Spegniamo la luce per fare la conta , ivi, p. Princiotta, Dante DNA della poesia? Verbaro, Pisa, ETS, , pp. Frabotta, Ultime dalla Terra di Nessuno , cit. Frabotta, La viandanza , in Tutte le poesie , cit.
Frabotta, Gradiva , in Tutte le poesie , cit. Frabotta, La Viandanza , in Scrittori, tendenze letterarie e conflitto delle poetiche in Italia , a cura di R. Ciavolella, Ravenna, Longo, , p. Mussapi, Milano, Jaca Book, , pp. Frabotta, La Viandanza , cit. Frabotta, Mio marito ha un cuore generoso , in Tutte le poesie , cit. Ravera, Il Kamasutra della tenerezza. Deidier, Postfazione, in B. Frabotta, Tutte le poesie , cit.
Intervista a Biancamaria Frabotta , cit. La strada di Cupi. Frabotta, La felice combinazione , in Tutte le poesie , cit. Estratto da " https: The danger inherent in the imagination and the search for knowledge, concepts that connect Ariosto, a Renaissance humanist, to other scholars of his time will be of particular interest to this examination. Ariosto's treatment of madness and the self echoes the ideas of his con- temporaries clustered at the court of Lorenzo the Magnificent. His por- trayal of these concepts, as reflected in the very title of his work, places the Neoplatonic emphasis on divine fury at the heart of his epic' Ariosto's lan- guage in the Furioso lead me to focus on two scholars central to the circle of Florentine Renaissance Neoplatonism: Marsilio Ficino , and his friend, teacher and supporter, Cristoforo Landino , a poet and a critic.
The differences in Ficino and Landino's respective treat- ments of knowledge and the imagination remind us that the Neoplatonic circle was not homogeneous in its thinking, but varied, evolving and dialectical. In this article I will show how Landino defines the creative imagination in terms of an external relationship, that is, as an activity that seeks knowledge in the divine sphere, while Ficino's definition, on the other hand, focuses on the relationship between genius and the internal, human self Ariosto would have known well the works of both Ficino and Landino, both of whom died when he was still a young man.
Carroll states that the narrative "presupposes Stoic notions about reason and order" 9. Cozzarelli their divergent ideologies. His text is not only a microcosm of this diverse thinking, but also the embodiment of his deliberate play upon the ideas of his predecessors. In fact, Ariosto incorporates elements from both writers into his epic, though ultimately, as I will show in this study, it is with Ficino's work that his ideas are most closely allied.
The Orlando furioso places love, the great Platonic and stilnovista theme, at its centre, with madness and the journey towards knowledge revolving around it. The constant references to divinity in Angelica's descriptions-the most blatant being her name-highlight the imagination of desire in this text. Ariosto imbues her with traditional ideas on the role of beauty and the path to blessedness.
Marinelli, in fact, described the poem as a purposeful juxtaposition of a Neoplatonic hierarchy of loves For Marinelli, Orlando represents "amore bestiale," the lowest form of love madness born from appetitive sensuality But there are other, more ambiguous, aspects of this character that reflect the complexity of both the poem and its poet.
To understand better Ariosto's approach to these themes a closer exami- nation of the texts of his two near-contemporaries is in order. Landino's work provides us with an obvious example of the Neoplatonic representation of imagination inspiring desire. His vast and successful Dante con l'esposizione di Cristoforo Landino interprets the entire Commedia as representative of the Platonic allegory of the flight of the soul towards Truth. Landino emphasizes the educational element of the poetic imagination and places beauty and the path to knowledge within that context.
He elevates the sta- tus of poetic ornamentation by celebrating the poet's use of original and innovative rhetorical devices to amplify the richness of the text. The poet's skilful ingegno is laudable because it fashions a beautiful veil over poet- ry's truth. And, what is amazing is that he matches the tones together in such a way that one receives beauty from the other, which multiplies the pleasure of the listener. This idea is reiterated in the third of Landino's Dispntationes Camaldulenses.
FiciNO, Landino and Ariosto's Lovers meaning, using the imagination as a guide in this educational journey. For Landino, poetry leads to truth by virtue of its veil. Ingegno, implicated in the search for knowledge, ultimately leads the pupil to find an even greater and more satisfying pleasure than the superficial one of gratifying the senses. Ariosto echoes Landino's ideas on the necessity of variety and pleasure. The words of Ariosto's narrator reflect this underlying sense: As varying the dishes quickens the appetite, so it is with my story: If Angelica is the beauty that should spark a desire that will lead Orlando to knowledge of the divine, Orlando's educational journey is problematic.
In Landino's scheme, characters driven by love should seek beauty on Earth in order to discover its heavenly counterpart. But Orlando is no pupil of Landino, seeking beneath the veil to find a greater truth. In his search for knowledge he takes, instead, a very dark path and remains, throughout most of the text, firmly enmeshed in the earthly sphere. Orlando is not simply an illustration of the Neoplatonic search for knowledge, nor even a demonstration of the failure of such a search.
See Cavallo for a fascinating study of the ways to knowledge in Ariosto's text as compared to Boiardo's. While she focuses on the character of Rodamonte, she uses Orlando to support her insights, concluding that "Ariosto casts doubt on both the possibilirv' of acquiring knowledge and the positive nature of the out- come once true knowledge is acquired" 31 4. I agree with Cavallo's reading that, for Ariosto, knowledge holds the potential for great danger Cavallo's conclusion seems more bleak than mine, however: Cozzarelli epic embody the danger inherent in the workings of the imagination and in the fragiUty of the human being's self-identity.
The Furioso is flush with Ariosto's references to a schism in the concept of the self, especially con- nected to the loss of reason. He often refers to the weakness of reason in the face of strong passions. The narrator explains that Orlando had wandered from the trail, "come era uscito di se stesso" "just as he had strayed from his true self"; As far back as Boiardo's Innamorato, Orlando's identity as a character was based on the figure of the stilnovista lover, characterized by his desire for Angelica and the heavenly perfection that her form represents.
When Angelica chooses her own path and announces her consummated human passion to the world, she forces an end to Orlando's idealized quest. This disrupts Orlando's constructed literary identity. When Orlando rebels against the truth of her choice he is battling for his own survival. His resis- tance persists throughout the Furioso until the very centre of the poem, with his dramatic metamorphosis into a destructive madness precipitated by the shattering of his illusions. Another example of the rela- tionship between reason and desire is given when Bradamante laments Ruggiero's supposed infidelity in canto De Panizza Lorch believes that in the first half of the poem, reason "plays a lim- ited role in Ariosto's ethical concept" and that Ariosto takes "a quizzical attitude towards reason as the principle of order in the world of passions" For Ascoli, this leads to a paradox of identity and loss of self Mazzetta sees Orlando's recog- nition of his exclusion from Angelica's happiness as a sign of the limitations of the powers of the self "Power", The new Orlando personifies the Renaissance madman in the extreme.
He rages naked through the countryside, uproot- ing trees with superhuman strength and slaughtering with his bare hands any who cross his path. His use of language is minimized, his only full sen- tences being absurd demands for a horse — a parody of rational discussion which emphasizes the hero's derangement.
Orlando's destruction, born of despair, is without goal because he is incapable of directing its power; he is now separated from his own rea- son, literally and figuratively. Orlando is no longer himself Throughout the Furioso Ariosto makes references to self- awareness and its absence when discussing the passions of many characters aside from Orlando, and also in the narrator himself This correlation between love and madness as a loss of self, or separation from self and from reason, is a recurring theme.
Similar language can be found, for example, in the tales of Rodomonte and Bradamante that detail their responses to the experi- ence of betrayal. Later she is described as con- sumed by furious rage In similar circumstances, Rodomonte "da se stesso era diviso" 'was not himself"; Illustrations of his behaviour include references to his fury and burning rage The nature of love's madness is explicit in the narrator's commentary, placed immediately after Orlando has lost his mind. See this text for more discussion on the medieval emphasis on the iconography of madness.
Valesio cites the Furioso as an example of the extension of such types of representation into the Renaissance. See in particular the Appendix for the traditions evoked by Orlando's speech as a madman. Her essay firmly establishes the parallel themes and interrelationships in these three episodes, and also expands upon the danger inherent in the knowledge of love's true nature.
Cozzarelli e se ben Orlando ognun non smania, suo furor mostra a qualch' altro segnale. Though not everyone goes raving mad like Orlando, Love's folly shows itself in other ways; what clearer sign of lunacy than to lose your own self through pining for another? Later, in the Introduction to canto 30, the narrator again laments the effects of love, stating: This idea of the intelligent scholar both narrator and Orlando — who was highly educated and multi-lingual being overcome by passion that leads to overwhelming melancholy and eventually madness and loss of the self, is not new.
Ficino made the works of Plato and Plotinus, as well as other Greek writers, available to his contemporaries by translating them into Latin and commenting upon them. He was also deeply interested in Platonic and Neoplatonic ideas on the flight of the soul, as evident in his Theologia Platonica. His own philosophical thinking is indicative of his formal stance on the imagination, poetic madness and creativity. This text, addressed to the scholar and creative thinker, is a practical guide to life and work. It moves away from Platonic idealism and towards the very real concern of maintaining the health of the human body so that its owner can live a long and productive life.
This text contains those same ele- ments we see in the episode of Orlando's madness and in the poet's ironic references to his own love-sickness: In Ficino's "De Amore," poetic madness is beneficial for it arouses the soul and soothes it with its musical sound, bringing its parts into har- mony.
Within this con- text, Ficino expressly links the intellectual greatness of both poets and crit- ics using madness and "black bile," or melancholy, as their common foun- dation, with melancholy also posited as the facilitator of creative genius. In the De vita Ficino defines it as stemming from the type of melancholy or black bile which, kindling and burning, puts people in an excited and frenzied state Three Books on Life, From the title of Ariosto's text, we know that Orlando is furioso, semantically linking him to the concept of the poet and to the creative inspiration discussed in Ficino's text.
Ficino also refers to divine inspiration and prophecy when he explains how black bile leads to creativity in thinkers: As the term was not equivalent to our conception of "creative" or "poetic" imagi- nation. Dante used the term ingegno in relation to the creative imagination, and Ficino uses the term ingenium repeatedly in the De vita, occasionally in its gen- eral sense, as "natural bent," but more often as the mental ability that can gath- er images and recombine them into new forms — basically, as the formative step of the creative imagination. Ingenium, similar to our English terms "ingenuity" and "genius," can be seen as a combination of both imagination and invention.
The contexts in which it is used link it to the creative and poetic imagination. Latin quotations from Ficino's De vita are from the edition, while quotations in English are from the translation by Kaske and Clark Three Books on Life. Cozzarelli a result, it is filled from above with divine influences and oracles, and it always invents new and unaccustomed things and predicts the fiiture. Verum missa haec tanquam leuiora iam faciamus, atque ad id quod per- iculosissimum est, reuertamur, ad atram bilem, scilicet quae, quoties abu[n]dat et furit, cum corpus totum tum uel maxime spiritum, quasi quoddam instrumentum ingenii, ipsumque ingenium et indicium labefactat.
Klibansky, Panofsky and Saxl state that "Only the humanism of the Italian Renaissance was able to recognise [. It can also be a negative by-product of scholarly activity, as are headaches and poor eye- sight. Nonetheless, despite its negative aspects, the stimulation of the cre- ative genius requires the presence of black bile. This duality surrounding the effects of melancholy is intricately linked to the ambiguity felt towards the creative imagination.
Like Ficino, Ariosto, too, acknowledges the humanity of the intellec- tual, and the fact that melancholy and madness can accompany thought. He, too, realizes that all of these factors are inescapable parts of the human being, and that destruction hides just beneath the surface, needing to be understood in order to be controlled. This is clear when Ariosto's narrator, in response to the accusation that he is being hypocritical for warning against love, again connects loss of reason to love: Io vi rispondo che comprendo assai, or che di mente ho lucido intervallo; ed ho gran cura e spero di farlo ormai di riposarmi e d'uscir fuor di ballo: And I am taking pains with imminent success, I hope to find peace and with- draw from the dance — though I cannot do so as quickly as I should wish, for the disease has eaten me to the bone.
Ariosto's reference to his "illness" recalls the way in which Ficino's text had grounded the imagination into the human realm. The De vita is geared towards the alleviation of genius' negative effects, especially that of black bile, in order that melancholic, yet simultaneously gifted sufferers may learn to thrive despite their natural human limitations.
Cozzarelli igitur se cognoscat, suiq[ue] ipsius moderator ac medicus esto" 40; bk. We must know our weaknesses and strengths, our "natural bent. And it is this aspect of Ficino's thought that figures most prominently in Ariosto's epic. Ariosto also realizes that lapses of reason are expected — as advocated by Ficino, we must educate ourselves to learn how to minimize the damage when the faculties are out of balance and black bile takes control. It is clear that Orlando did not know himself in the first part of the Furioso. It appears that the great Platonic themes of love, beauty and good- ness have destroyed him.
In love, he has lost himself in the pursuit of the other, and now his black bile has overtaken him entirely as he rages uncon- trollably, his body on earth and his rational senses completely absent. He is beyond being able to save himself At this point the ultimate demon- stration of his incapacity for both knowledge and imagination is the fact that he has also lost his memory, the starting point for all Platonic voyages of discovery. Mad Orlando fails to recognize even Angelica, the former object of his love, for all recollection of her was destroyed The crazed Orlando dragging horses to pieces is a mirror image of the paladin Astolfo, who rides to the heavens on a great flying creature of the imagination.
Astolfo, who represents an alternative relationship between imagination and knowledge, salvages Orlando's senses and returns him to the battle. In the process, the reader discovers that Orlando's separation from himself was both literal and humorous — he has no brains Significantly, the character that rescues Orlando is also one who is familiar with both love's delusion and the voyage of education, knowledge and self-discovery. Like Orlando, Astolfo was a lover who had lived enthralled by superficial beauty. He had fallen prey to the aged sorceress Alcina, who entraps men with a false image of youthful idealized beauty.
Astolfo thus appears in the Furioso as a former lover, and as one who has already been punished and has learned his lesson. Follow Your Natural Profession"; Note the terms ingenium, used in this passage as "nat- ural bent," and genium. When Astolfo leaves his arboreal body and recovers his human form he also leaves the passion for human beauty behind, at least for the duration of the Furioso. Astolfo first appears in the Furioso when he departs from the level at which Orlando remains for the first half of the poem as he searches for his beloved Angelica.
Astolfo has another enlightening experience when, after being freed, he visits Logistilla's domain. Logistilla, the daughter of Love, is understood by most critics to represent reason, a connection evoked also by her name. Logistilla in fact embodies both the ideas expressed by Landino on the pleasure of beauty leading to education as well as an important aspect of Ficino's philosophy on contemplation. The language Ariosto chooses to describe Logistilla's domain makes the connection to Neoplatonic ideas unmistakable.
Through her beauty and virtuosity, Logistilla at first inspires reverence, so that the viewer continues to contemplate her presence Astolfo and Logistilla highlight the concepts of beauty, contemplation, poetic imagination and knowledge, and all of these play a role in Ficino and Landino's philosophies. For Landino, the thinker is educated by exploring the encyclopaedic form of poetry, which is the means to recall to memory a distant world and the Neoplatonic search for all knowledge. He emphasizes the ability of the poetic imagination to lead away from the human world, and he also underscores the importance of such distance in the search for knowledge.
Landino's space is distance: Ficino, on the other hand, transforms the distance of Landino's poetic imagination by linking creativity to melancholy, which brings poetry into the domain of Saturn, the planet of contemplation. The melancholy of Saturn, or Chronos, enables genius to be tied to time. With Saturn's time, space results in distance. Poetry, as the art involving both rhetoric and time, is intimately bound up with memory, which itself is traditional- ly the eye of the imagination.
Seekers of — 13 — Julia M. Cozzarelli knowledge collect and look into themselves, distancing themselves from the external world in the closed-off space of the imagination. Ficino refers to the traditional idea of contemplation as a way to reach truth, but it is contained in the idea that it is the centre of the self that must be analyzed.
With the contemplation of the inner self, one can then move to the anal- ogous higher realms. Ficino stresses the importance of gaining knowledge through looking inwardly and knowing oneself, and this is an important aspect of Logistilla's education. Logistilla's palace is fdled with jewels that reflect every virtue and vice of the person who looks into them. Orlando, the man who is the most alienated from his true self than any in the poem, never meets with Logistilla.
It has been said that Ariosto uses Logistilla's realm to demonstrate that reason fails in its education. One proof for this is the example of Ruggiero himself, the most prominent failure of one of Logistilla's pupils. It is here that Astolfo gains enough knowledge to control the winged hip- pogryph with which Astolfo and his imagination are able to take flight. Some critics posit Logistilla's education as unsuccessful in the Furioso because, despite her contentment, goodness and beauty, her visitors soon wish to leave.
Kisacky interprets this to mean that for Ariosto people are "not ready for a life of reason and self-control" Although this is in part valid, if we re-examine Ficino we can find another explanation.
Even as love could bring danger to the thinker by hindering contemplation, con- templation itself holds certain risks. This risk is clearly demonstrated when Ficino refers to the "human" causes of divine contem- plation. Ficino sees melancholy as the soil from which the search for knowledge is born. In the De vita book 2, chapter 16 he writes: Therefore, the Ficinian contemplation Logistilla incites can be endured only for so long, and then the thinker must move on, using the knowledge he has gained to its best potential and applying it to life.
Indeed, Logistilla's visitors are inspired to continue to seek out knowledge, for both Ruggiero and Astolfo, once they are able to fly, decide to travel around the world.
Although Ficino and Landino follow opposite approaches in their search for knowledge, they both believe that the creative imagination can lead to truth. Their common ground is the Platonic concept that the indi- vidual and the cosmos are mutually interconnected. Through Astolfo's balanced love of knowledge and its resulting flight, we will be able to examine what Ariosto says about poet- ry and the world of knowledge from that distant vantage point.
When Astolfo learns to control the hippogryph, the type of imagina- tion he represents is evident — he is the embodiment of the poetic imagi- nation, as is the creature he rides on his journeys. In book 13 of the Theologia Platonica, human beings are also the link between heaven and earth. Marinelli states that, as a "surrogate" for the poet, Astolfo alone shares his perspective Mazzotta sees the voyage of Astolfo on the hippogryph as the "freedom of the esthetic imagination" "Power," The creature is a microcosm of the poem: It moves in concert with the imaginative workings of the text and marks out the space of the poem.
Ariosto's delib- erate delay in providing the reader with a full description of the animal a process that takes the first four cantos of the text makes the unveiling of the beast, never before encountered in literature, still more climactic. This emphasis on the hippogryph and the creative imagination serves to under- line the imaginative basis of love and desire in this text. Once Astolfo decides to ride the hippogryph, he embodies the creative genius at work as he combines elements from several bridles in order to shape one that can best control the beast Astolfo has learned his lessons at Logistillas so well that he can create his own bridle for the hip- pogryph.
Orlando, on the other hand, never experiences the flight of the hippogryph. Orlando's primary role in the Furioso is as a character divided from himself, losing his reason due to the overwhelming force of passion, madness, and melancholy's black bile. And for most of the story, Astolfo has something that Orlando does not: Prepared properly, Astolfo can wield the power of the imagination, which he uses to embark upon a voyage of discovery. Astolfo and the hippogryph embody the imagination's connection with the desire for knowledge.
Astolfo's adventures are a fantastic ironic gloss over the great literary traditions of the past. He even mimics Dante's voyage towards knowledge in an abbreviated whirlwind tour through Hell and up to Earthly Paradise. The hippogryph is also seen as the juxtaposition of nature and art, representing the poet as imitator and inventor Jossa, Ascoli observes that the hippogryph's fusion of myth and reality "forces the question of the relation between reality and imagination, nature and artefice" Others have also concluded that the hippogryph symbolizes creative imagination. Kisacky high- lights the connection with Pegasus, symbol of poetic inspiration, and interprets the hippogryph's flight as representing the panoramic vision of the poet; she also notes that the characters who fully control the beast are creative ones It is clear from the overall structure as well as the small details of these scenes that this voyage is a parody, and not a true spiritual journey as had been the case with its source.
Ariosto expands on the literary traditions of the past to create a lunar episode that is fascinating and ambiguous, while also infused with humour. Astolfo's urge to explore the moon is laced with Platonic terminology. John in the earthly paradise. John states that Astolfo was chosen to restore the wits of Orlando, who had been deliberately made to lose them by God.
John, God had inspired Astolfo's desire to travel and has assisted him in coming to the moon with the gifts of the horn and the beast of the imagination. Like Landino's poet, Astolfo is portrayed as divinely inspired to create and to soar to great heights, bringing home a divine message hidden beneath beauty and education. However, despite this noble mission, and the build-up of the text along Platonic and Neoplatonic lines, first-time readers of the Furioso might be surprised to find their expectations of a spiritual voyage ending in the bizarre lunar set- ting Ariosto depicts.
When Astolfo reaches the wondrous moon, he finds vast allegorical mounds of items lost from the Earth below. John spells out the hidden allegory of each heap for both traveller and reader, who are not expected to be able to interpret the meaning on their own. Cozzarelli beauty on the surface. The biggest heap on the moon contains brains, which are gaseous and stored in vials.
This mound is so extremely large because human beings are more prone to lose their reason than anything else, and this is also why folly "pazzia" is the one thing that stays perma- nently on the earth. John that cause one to lose one's wits. As in Ficino's De vita, the pur- suit of physical love results in a movement away from the self Ariosto takes this opportunity to make an ironic comment through the mouth of St. John, who states that there were many brains lost by sophists, astrologers, and poets Astolfo finds and inhales some of his own lost brains, and locates Orlando's brains, clearly labeled and stored in the largest vial.
Ariosto's treatment of the moon can be read as collapsing the charac- teristic vertical direction of the epic. The attempt to escape to the moon as a way of transcending human action is a dead-end voyage, as the moon turns out to be far from the shining and mystical place imagined. The moon has even been read as a "repository not of meaning but of unmean- ing" Quint, This demonstrates that the Earth and moon are actual- ly interchangeable. Despite this passage's religious imagery, no divine truth is discovered.
The moon is not a higher plane, but reflects instead the disconnection within the human being, the separation of the mind and the body that occurs when one loses oneself in the pursuit and the image of the other. It is here, in a part of the epic focused on the voyage of knowledge and the danger of the imagination, that Ariosto situates a discussion of the poetic imagination.
John clarifies for Astolfo a scene they are witness- ing on the moon: Only the poets, represented by a pair of swans, are able to salvage some of the names of the deceased, which are then permanent- ly enshrined. John interprets the scene as a demonstration of the corre- spondence of earth and moon, with the moon reflecting the divinity of earthly immortality. Despite this explanation, what the moon reflects is not spiritual, but worldly; the immortality of fame.
John praises poets for immortahzing the worthy, but the majority of his speech is a bitter warn- ing directed towards patrons. Poets are "i sacri ingegni" "the heaven-sent geniuses" and sting ' patrons deserve obUvion, for friendship with poets would have saved them from Lethe's waters John later observes that he, too, is a writer hence his empathy , and has been rewarded for praising Christ with the great fortune that cannot be erased by time or death Given the context, and despite the spiritual significance of this character, this reward can be read as immortality through fame.
In this passage, St. John also makes it clear that all manner of patrons can benefit from being friendly to poets, for through poetry even the disgraceful can be glorified. Appropriately, given the structure of the Furioso itself, St.
John cites examples from epic literature. In this famous and much-debated pas- sage, St. Greece was van- quished, Troy triumphant, and Penelope a whore"; John's monologue is preceded by praise of Ariosto's patron, juxta- posed with the lunar mound of burst crickets that represent, no less, poet- ry in praise of patrons. But this passage also brings us face to face with the question of the value of language — do the signs on the earth used by poets lead us to a higher truth?
Or do the poets "lie" without a higher purpose? These issues lie at the heart of both the Furioso and the life of its creator. On the moon, Ariosto connects poets to the earth by linking poetry and history. Ascoli reads this passage as bringing the level of the Bible down to that of poetic lies For Quint, finding meaning in the world itself is not possible when the text, the instrument of meaning, points only to the "higher truth" that poets lie Cozzarelli is demonstrating the fact that poetry can create its own history.
The ancient heroes are such because of the poet, and the original reality no longer matters. Poetry creates reality and shapes the world. Paradoxically, however, it is also true that Ariosto is constantly remind- ing us of poetry's fictionality and telling us to explore beneath the veil. Routinely, the narrator interjects to assert the truthfulness of some charac- ter or event in his text, most often when presenting us with scenes that exceed the bounds of credibility.
This technique adds to the humour of the text while simultaneously warning readers to be conscious of what they are reading. The questions of poetic language and its relationship to truth again recall Landino and his discussion of Dante's Commedia. Ariosto evokes Dante's ideas on language that converge in the figure of Ulysses in Inferno 26 by including a Homeric reference in the centre of his discussion on poetry. Ariosto also brings his characters to the moon in the chariot of Elijah, which figures in Dante's passage. John's eyes, "flame-like" during his monologue, recall the tongues of flame enveloping Ulysses that illus- trated the deceptive potential of language.
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In this passage, however, Ariosto is not recalling only Dante; he is also evoking Landino, the Dante scholar. Landino was a great proponent of the idea of the divinely inspired poet, as was Ficino in his more formal philo- sophical discussions. She reads Ariosto's text as an invitation to interpretation, rather than embodying one underlying truth. Carroll, also, uses the moon scene to posit Ariosto's irony as a criticism not of all literature, but of overly literal interpretations of texts For Dante and Landino the creative poet- ic imagination, the Hnk between reason and the passions, is the very foun- dation of knowledge.
He presented the imagination as the means to the highest of goals, while also acknowledging its perils and its appar- ently irreconcilable double nature. Landino, instead, does not dwell on the dangerous side of the imagination. For him, there is an ethics of the cre- ative imagination, as is apparent in his commentary on Ulysses' "folle volo," where he notes Ulysses' artifice and his consequent condemnation to Hell in the circle of fraud It is wrong, however, to assume that simply because Landino is aware of rhetoric's ability to lead astray this also means that he is portraying the poetic imagination as doing the same.
Landino makes it quite clear that rhetoric is not to be confused as being the equivalent of poetry. For Landino, poetry is an encyclopaedic form of the creative imagination; it is higher than, and encompasses all the other "human" arts. Although Landino is forced to admit that artifice does exist, he is very reluctant to condemn the fraudulent side of the imagination when it is involved in the poetic process.
The creative imagination, in poetic form, is capable of transcendent vision. For Landino, Ulysses' voyage fails because he has no poetic vision. He attempts to reach knowledge-the vision of Purgatory — but he is not capable of finding the hidden truth. He has rhetoric, but he does not have the divine gift of poetry. He moves beyond the limits of his inborn ingegno and so fails in his quest.
In his ethics of the creative imagination, Landino reiterates the prima- cy of the search for knowledge. Ingegno not only prefigures, but shapes the voyage itself, leading the traveller into a realm of seeing beyond rational capabilities. See in particular pp. Landino reiterates this in the Prolusione Dantesca: Although Landino clearly values the creative imagination, he lauds it not as a sign of a unique individual human mind, but as a gift selected and granted sole- ly by God. For Landino, however, the imagination that is not divinely inspired is limited by personal experience and ability, and this, in turn, limits the voyage towards knowledge.
Ariosto seems to address Landino's concerns about poetry and divinity by having St. John posit Astolfo's voyage to the moon, and his desire for knowledge itself, as being inspired by God. For Landino, it was not the voyage of the imagination itself that leads one astray-it was how the creative person employs the will in selecting the direction of its path that leads either to condemnation or to praise. There are other aspects of Ariosto's discussion of poetry that recall both Landino and Ficino. Poetic madness and contemplation, like the double flame in Inferno 26, illustrate the close connection between rhetoric and prophecy.
Landino stresses the divinity of the poet, and Ficino, too, discusses the poet as being divinely inspired. Landino's and Ficino's con- ceptions of the creative imagination can be seen as confronting two alter- nate ways of seeing: The prophet speaks from exile, but the words spoken are directed towards the human world. Divine fury makes Landino's poet prophetic, for the language of the poet- ic flight is distant from the human world and surpasses all human arts. But the poet is able to speak to the people and to lead them towards knowledge also through his divine experiences.
Ficino mediates between prophecy and mysticism and collapses their boundaries. In the Theologia platonica, he places the poet second after the philosopher among those who separate themselves from their bodies while in this life bk 13, ch 2. It is contemplation that creates this common activity. Ficino is aware of the mystical aspect of contemplation, but we have seen how he also warns of the dangers of such self- alienation and iso- lation. If this separation is car- ried too far, the thinker will lose contact with himself as well as with the human world.
Ficino roots poetic and prophetic divine fury into a medicinal frame- work, joining the Platonic abstraction to the condition of human flesh and to the madness of the lover. The danger of the boundlessness of the flight of the imagination is not just a philosophical danger, but a physical one as well. While Ficino understands the value of inner contemplation, he is still too closely linked with the human realm and with the process of living to allow the contemplator to disconnect permanently from that world. Nonetheless, the imagination plays a large role in the Neoplatonic search- es for knowledge: Throughout Ariosto's epic we have seen the warnings and demonstra- tions of the danger of separating from the self, especially through love and its resulting madness and loss of reason.
In this regard, Axiosto's poet seems less akin to Landino's divine poet than to the poet tied to the black bile of Ficino's De vita. Like Ficino, Ariosto moves towards a tone of acceptance of the dangers and duality of the imagination. In his Platonic works Ficino emphasizes imagination's negative pole, but still asserts the superiority of philosophy. Ariosto reworks these ideas within his own context and plays upon them, preserving some of their meaning while also parodying them.
In the Furioso there is a fundamental sense that poetry has great value, even though its divinity is parodied. But the idea of divinely inspired creativity is downplayed while, instead, the effects of love's passion on the poet are highlighted. In this sense, Ariosto shadows Ficino's genius, for he empha- sizes his own humanity. Lie is aware of the fact that melancholy is a part of the human being and a necessary ingredient in creation. Ariosto's work takes Landino's assertion that poetry leads to knowledge as a point of departure.
But instead of Landino's knowledge of the divine, what is ultimately emphasized in the Furioso is Ficino's concept of the importance of knowing one's human limitations. For Ariosto, Landino's assertion that poetry leads to knowledge is eclipsed by Ficino's concept of the importance of knowledge of the self Moreover, this self-knowledge, which allows the poet to manage his passions as best he can, leads to greater poetic ability. For although poetry may lead to truth, the clearest truth Ariosto is cele- brating in the Furioso is his very own human poetic skill and his ability to use it to dazzle the reader.
The narrator's self-reflexive comments serve not only to call attention to the fact that we are reading a poem, but also, and more importandy, to call attention to the poet's creative skill and to his control of the story. While he is professing to be "one of us" by constantly acknowledging his own weakness in the struggle against madness, he is actually placing himself above the text and in control of the reader's desires and thoughts. While the beauty of the text may spark the reader's desire to read on, the path has been chosen by Ariosto. The poet resembles Astolfo, soaring above us on the shimmering wings of his creation.
But this is not an uncomplicated act. Like Ficino's poet, as well as his critic, Ariosto's genius is a struggling, human genius — one who not only knows the depths of suffering and depression, but must also accept that sadness and the downward flight of the imagination as indispensable elements of the genius with which one is gifted.
Through melancholy, the poet and his creation are intimately linked to love's passion. Ariosto uses this concept to illustrate the close connection between reason and love's madness not only in human life, but also in the workings of the imagination. He does this in order to place the poetic imagination above all else.
Mazzotta successfully posits the perspective of the narrator, who is both inside and outside the work, as demonstrating the poet's "play of the poetic imagination, whereby the poet confronts and is enmeshed by the ambiguities of all values but transcends them" "Power," Both Astolfo and the poet work from a point of relative detachment, for they are able to see themselves and the world as the comedy it really is. Orlando, however, is not a poetic creator but a passive reader and so he plunges into madness because of the shattering of his fictional image through the truth that was contained in the poetry of Medoro.
Johnson Haddad uses the imagery of Orlando reading the poem to connect him with Medusa, Perseus and Narcissus, representing the dark side of self-con- frontation and poetry, for it can lead to creative failure and madness Masciandaro also connects Orlando to Narcissus in that he is unable to accept the fact that Angelica is the other, not shaped by his own image of her As Mazzotta has noted, Orlando's madness lacks the fluency of language, which needs to be retrieved by the imagina- tion "Power," The irony may be that while poetry and the imagina- tion make Orlando insane, his senses are restored thanks to Astolfo's flight of poetic imagination.
What in particular Astolfo brings to Orlando is the ability for a critical reading of creativity and poetry — he should be aware that it is human-made and be able to read beneath its apparent reality. In the Furioso, the culmination of the themes of reason, love, madness and imagination converge with Astolfo's restoration of Orlando's senses.
At the same moment, Orlan- do is also "cured" of his love-sickness-although this is probably not a per- manent cure, Astolfo and the narrator will both lose themselves in love again The lovers in Ariosto's world display many conflicting aspects of human nature. The imagination of desire and poetry's flight demonstrate that when the balance between these faculties is lost, black bile's melan- choly takes over and madness and loss of self results. Paradoxically, melan- choly both works through the imagination and depresses its creative work- ings, which can also lead to madness.
This potential for madness, howev- er, is necessary for life, love and poetic creation, so the poet must accept the reality that the passions are part of us and are capable of ruling us. There is a basic dichotomy underlying the Furioso; as in Ficino's text, you cannot remove the passions from the self, but the hope is that through rea- son you may also come to know yourself and so be capable of checking pas- sion's destructive power.
While love and the imagination drive the poem and Orlando, and, ultimately, lead to the demise of both, it is the imagi- nation and love that also shape them and give them life. And it is the col- lapse or the deliberate discarding of desire that ends the imaginative move- ment of the poem. The paradox is that if passion and the potential for madness are eliminated, art also fades: Ariosto's Orlando furioso shows that imagination is the focal point of the limitless activities that distinguish human beings from other living creatures, as well as from each other. Orlando's madness tied to the hori- zontal nature of love's imagination and Astolfo's voyage to the moon con- nected to the vertical movement of the creative imagination's poetry are at opposite poles.
Through this earth- ly odyssey and its lunar counterpart we will examine the places in Ariosto's text that are caught in the balance between reason and love's madness. They are engaged in various dialogues with other birds, yet they remain apart and essentially solitary. Ha curato due volumi del femminismo italiano e condotto battaglie civili per i diritti delle donne. I Verbi del prete: Malcolm Bell offers a is planned that will present many more framework for terracotta production monuments. Raffaelli, Semantica tragica,
Yet, behind these issues of love, insanity, and the thirst for — 25 — Julia M. Cozzarelli knowledge lies the very basic notion of language as the basis for all human reality. The very different, yet ever fluctuating ties that these two charac- ters share with the creative imagination support their roles as personifica- tions of different approaches to language and life. As perceived by Ficino, these poles are, however, inseparable one from the other.
There is no one figure in Ariosto's text that can be used as a key to unlock the door to earth- ly happiness; all the individual portraits must be gathered together into one unified frame that illustrates the complexity of human nature and of what has often been considered its distinguishing feature-the creative and poet- ic imagination. Oxford University Press, Orlando Furioso. Crisis and Evasion in the Italian Renaissance. Princeton University Press, The Book of Memory: A Study of Memory in Medieval Culture.
The Case of Rodamonte. De Panizza Lorch, Maristella. Three Books on Life. Carol Kaske and John Clark. State University of New York at Binghamton, Marsilio Ficino and the Phaedran Charioteer. University of California Press, The Earthly Paradise and the Renaissance Epic. The Poetics of Self-Confrontation. La fantasia e la memoria: Magic in Boiardo and Ariosto. Battista and Bernardo Sessa, Scritti critici e teorici. Romance Epic Narrative in the Italian Renaissance.
Wayne State University Press, University of Missouri Press, Notes on Orlando's Folly," pp. Dante Vision and the Circle of Knowledge. Ronald Bogue and Mihai I. State University of New York Press, On the Latin Language De lingua latina.
Harvard University Press, Stocker, Judit Sexual Warrior. Vorrei esprimere la mia profonda gratitudine a Laura Sanguineti White e ad Andrea Baldi, del dipartimento d'Italiano di Rutgers, per l'incoraggiamento e il sostegno offertomi nelle ricerche su questo soggetto. Alla dinamica che contrappone le figure dei consiglieri nelle tragedie dellavalliane allude Sanguineti White, Dal detto alla figura, Lo scontro, che in entrambe le tragedie oppone l'eroina al consigliere fraudolen- to e i servi fedeli ai servi malvagi, ha sempre per oggetto le emozioni e le passioni del sovrano.
La figura di Judit esempla in maniera particolarmente riuscita i dilemmi posti dal complesso rapporto fra la dimensione etica dell'agire umano e la sua efficacia concreta. Per l'appunto, non simula, dissimula.
Della Valle, dal suo osservatorio di piccolo funzionario soggetto alla ruota della fortuna, assolve e giustifica l'utilizzo dell'unico strumento a dispo- sizione dei sottoposti per conservare un margine d'intervento autonomo nei confronti tanto del potere politico quanto della Chiesa. In Tasso l'opposta valu- tazione delle due giovani donne si basa sull'antitesi dei fini perseguiti ed esula da ogni considerazione intorno al mezzo adottato.
Della Valle ha ben presente la percezione sociale del ruolo, del com- portamento e persino del corpo della donna. Judit, in particolare, viene evocata nel prologo in termini di suprema bellezza: L'origine controriformista della lettura di Judit quale figura della Vergine e le imprevedibili conseguenze di tale accosta- mento vengono sondate nel saggio di Pietropaolo, "ludit, Femme Fatale of the Baroque Stage.
La descrizione della bellezza delle eroine, l'attenzione al loro abbigliarsi e le scene di seduzione sono da ricondurre a quest'ottica, prima che ad una specifica intenzione edonistica o voyeuristica dell'autore. Tuttavia, il suo invito ad Aman rappresenta per lui un'ascesa in termini di prestigio e di potere: Le due regine della terza tragedia. Isabella e Maria, sono invece delle vere sovrane, le cui caratteristiche saranno da esaminare insieme a quelle degli altri monarchi delle tragedie di Della Valle. E il potere dato loro dalla bellezza, che seduce e innamora, legando il volere dell'uomo ai loro disegni.
La protagonista tace a tutti i suoi progetti, persino alla serva Abra, alla quale pure mostra un animo coraggioso ed ispirato, che confida nella grazia e nella misericordia divina.
L'eroina ebrea lascia agli interlocutori il compito di interpretare i suoi pensieri, senza svelarsi, a differenza del verboso Oloferne, che indulge ad una con- tinua, e forse compiaciuta, autoanalisi". Non abbiamo una descrizione caratterizzante di Judit; la sua avvenenza, ripetutamente menzionata e cele- brata, resta priva di connotati precisi. Di lei conosciamo solo il colore dora- si veda in proposito l'analisi di Sanguineti White, Dal detto alla figura, Sotto le vesti di donna imbelle, timorosa e compiacente, combatte la propria guerra per la salvezza della patria, facendo leva, scientemente, sulle aspettative maschili.
Vagao vede in lei un'umile prigioniera, desiderabile agli occhi del condottiero e dunque capace di guadagnare al servo-con- sigliere un insperato controllo sul proprio capo. Si tratta di un episodio centrale per importanza e incidenza strutturale, dove alle lusinghe dei sensi si somma la fascinazione della parola, capace di legare e avvincere. Il ruolo chiave rivestito dalla parola rende questa scena di seduzione particolarmente suggestiva dal punto di vista metatestuale. E possibile infatti riconoscere in questi versi una riflessione sul potere persuasivo della parola e dell'immagine, elementi costitutivi di ogni opera teatrale.
Fra 1 molti possibili esempi si veda, in particular modo, la risposta di Oloferne alle pressioni di Arimaspe, ai w. Per un diverso giudizio sulla ricezione di Judit tramite gli epiteti usati dai suoi interlocutori si veda Sanguineti White, Dal detto alla figura. Nel trasformare la rhesis in ekphrasis Della Valle aggiunge un ulteriore livello al proprio intervento metatestuale. L'autore intrec- cia questa indagine conoscitiva ad un'analisi sui rapporti tra parola e immagine, condotta facendo continuo ricorso al campo metaforico della visione come pittura interiore, operazione che incoraggia la lettura della scena della toletta di Judit quale intenzionale presa di posizione all'interno del dibattito sui rapporti tra poesia e pittura.
Attraverso la sua dettagliata descrizione dello svestirsi e del successivo abbigliarsi dell'eroina, Vagao lusinga la fantasia del padrone sulle gioie del- l'eros che questi si attende e ne accarezza il desiderio, rispondendo appieno all'invito di Oloferne che lo esorta ad un resoconto minuzioso: Tutto di', nulla lascia.
Tessari rilegge la natura obliqua della seduzione di Oloferne entro il "dramma cosmico" che a suo avviso strut- tura l'intera tragedia. La forza d'attrazione della bellezza, possibile strada di accesso a Dio, diviene fonte di labirintico smarrimento per il principio maschile rappresentato dal comandante assiro. Questo motivo viene sviluppato nel successivo intervento di Oloferne, che, interrompendo la narrazione del servo, esclama: Vaga figura formi a l'alma, del ver piena. Viene qui rapidamente delineata una vera e pro- pria teoria della ricezione: A differenza dei suoi interlocutori, Oloferne non sa misurare il potere della parola come arma di offesa e di difesa, ma rimane prigioniero di una con- cezione materialistica ed elementare dei conflitti.
Tale consapevolezza affiora invece nei commenti del coro, che, a con- clusione del racconto di Vagao, approfondisce l'analisi dei rapporti tra parola e immagine segnalando le differenze tra i due strumenti e decretan- do il trionfo della resa verbale, ovvero della poesia: Smuove, travolve, accende, e contra lei un cuor mal si difende. In questo passo, il coro si sofferma sugli effetti della parola e dell'immagine, insistendo sull'uso manipolatorio a cui questi mezzi possono essere piegati. Della Valle, dunque, non solo interviene nel se- colare dibattito sul rapporto tra pittura e poesia, ma assegna alla propria indagine un valore conoscitivo ed etico in sintonia col tema fondamental- mente politico delle sue tragedie.
La censura morale del coro assume, quindi, valore di ammoni- mento per gli spettatori, sottoposti, nel quotidiano, a sollecitazioni simili. Al tempo stesso, in un'ulteriore torsione cognitiva, la tragedia cerca, a sua volta, di 'sedurli' proprio nel momento in cui svela i meccanismi della per- suasione. Dopo questa premessa sull'insidia di un discorso congegnato ad arte, inteso a soggiogare il destinatario, il coro passa ad una notazione sul potere dell'immagine e della parola: Il primato della parola viene sancito dal ritratto — in versi — che Vagao delinea per il proprio signore. La rhesis del mezzano si trasforma in ekphrasis, descrivendo un vero e proprio quadro, anzi un dittico, in quan- to comprende anche la tavola elaborata dall'eroina.
Dapprima sembra che sia Vagao inconsapevole stru- mento divino a gestire le passioni del capo assiro. Vagao premette, infatti, al pro- prio racconto la sintesi dei pregi di Judit: Accecato da un pregiudizio misogino, Vagao non riconosce nella "vaga favella" della sua interlocutrice la stessa arma manipolatrice di cui egli si serve nei confronti del proprio signore. Nel costruire il proprio quadro, il servo dedica ampio spazio all'evo- cazione degli apparati fastosi che fanno da sfondo alla toletta della bella ebrea cfr. L'eroina accetta la sfida e si mostra in tutto il suo splendore.
La sua bellezza e il suo fascino sono le armi con cui assume il controllo della situazione fino a capovolgerla, facen- do del voyeur un proprio strumento tramite il quale inebriare e confondere Oloferne: Bisogna tuttavia prestar fede solo in parte a tale strategia di autorappresentazione: Nella descrizione della Judit Della Valle sembra aderire alle teorie di Castiglione, solo che qui l'eroina non mostra una mano o un piede, ma tutte le sue grazie segrete.
L'eroina persegue, infatti, i propri scopi senza mentire. Le basta tacere, senza dover accettare, ad esempio, il fine che implicitamente le attribuisce Vagao: Judit non simula, ma dissimula "onestamente": L'eroina ebrea vince la sua battaglia con le proprie armi, rima- nendo fedele a se stessa e alla sua causa fino alla fine. Tutte le sue parole suggeriscono un'attesa fervida, ma pudica, della notte in arrivo: E come se l'ebrea volesse dichiaratamente prendere le distanze dalla hyhris colpevole degli Assiri. A questo punto la protagonista passa alla controffensiva, invitando Vagao ad assistere a quel che resta della sua toletta: Questa scena costituisce il secondo pannello del dittico w.
Davanti al servo di Oloferne, e quindi per suo tramite nell'immaginazione del duce assiro, ella non a caso si riveste. Judit costruisce se stessa come opera d'arte, orientando tramite una "divina favella" la percezione visiva della propria bellezza. Raffaelli, Semantica tragica, L'eroina finisce col gestire il gioco, sovvertendo dall'interno le regole imposte dagli avversari.
La scena dell'abluzione costituisce il momento chiave di questa dis- simulata esibizione. L'eroina mostra al mezzano l'origine naturale del pro- prio fascino, in un passo di ricercata fattura: L'analogia con la pit- tura viene introdotta dall'eroina nel momento in cui assume un ruolo atti- vo nel definire la propria immagine.