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The Collation

A Renaissance best-seller of love and action

The Folger Shakespeare Library’s 26 copies of various editions of Lodovico Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso attest to its success during the 16th and early 17th centuries (a success that continued for much longer, but that is another story). 1 An epic poem replete with love and action, Orlando Furioso was an international bestseller worth having in one’s library even if one did not read it. It blended the austere literary tradition focused on war that developed around the memory of the medieval French king Charlemagne with the magical elements and love interests found in Arthurian legend—on top of which Ariosto added an ironic tone and humanist outlook. Loosely based on the Chanson of Roland, the epic follows the deeds of the fictive knight Orlando throughout the known world, including a trip to the moon. In it, Europe defends itself against invasion by the King of Africa, and the plot pits Christians against Saracens, with Orlando falling in unrequited love with a pagan. A significant side plot follows the Christian warrior Bradamante and her Muslim lover Ruggiero, who Ariosto presented as the ancestors of his patrons, the d’Este family.

Publishers competed with each other in producing new editions of the Orlando—the Universal Short Catalogue lists close to 200 pre-1601 editions—offering different features to always attract more customers: one could own an Orlando in a pocket or a large-size edition (the majority of the editions were in a quarto format), with editorial commentaries of various length, and with or without illustrations.

Early illustrated editions

  1. See for example Exercices furieux: à partir de l’édition de l’Orlando furioso De Franceschi (Venise, 1584), ed. Ilaria Andreoli. (Bern: Peter Lang, 2013).
  2. Harvard College Library Department of Printing and Graphic Arts, Catalogue of Books and Manuscripts Compiled by Ruth Mortimer under the Supervision of Philip Hofer and William A. Jackson. Part II: Italian Sixteenth Century Books (Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard UP, 1974) vol. 1, p. 42.

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