Chapter IX: The Orlando Furioso

_Orlando Furioso_ and _Divina Commedia_--Ariosto expresses the Renaissance as Dante the Middle Ages--Definition of Romantic, Heroic, Burlesque, Heroic-comic, and Satiric Poems--Ariosto's Bias toward Romance--Sense of Beauty in the _Cinque Cento_--Choice of Boiardo's unfinished Theme--The Propriety of this Choice--Ariosto's Irony and Humor--The Subject of the _Furioso_--Siege of Paris--Orlando's Madness--Loves of Ruggiero and Bradamante--Flattery of the House of Este--The World of Chivalry--Ariosto's Delight in the Creatures of his Fancy--Close Structure of the Poem--Exaggeration of Motives--Power of Picture-painting--Faculty of Vision--Minute Description--Rhetorical Amplification--Rapidity of Movement--Solidity--Nicety of Ethical Analysis--The Introductions to the Cantos--Episodes and _Novelle_--Imitations of the Classics--Power of Appropriation and Transmutation--Irony--Astolfo's Journey to the Moon--Ariosto's Portrait--S. Michael in the Monastery--The Cave of Sleep--Humor--Pathos and Sublimity--Olimpia and Bireno--Conception of Female Character--The Heroines--Passion and Love--Ariosto's Morality--His Style--The Epithet of Divine--Exquisite Finish--Ariosto and Tasso--Little Landscape-Painting--Similes--Realism--Adaptation of Homeric Images--Ariosto's Relation to his Age 1