Orlando Furioso

Orlando Furioso is Ludovico Ariosto's chivalric poem, written in ottava rima and continuing the world of Boiardo's Orlando Innamorato. War, love, and wandering quests bring its characters together and repeatedly separate them. Orlando's distress over Angelica's love for another man becomes a crisis of reason, while the story of Bradamante and Ruggiero develops a different line of loyalty and dynastic expectation. The narrator's interruptions keep several actions in motion at once. Wonder and irony coexist throughout, allowing the poem to honour the imaginative reach of romance while exposing the instability of the desires that drive it.