Ludovico Ariosto

Ludovico Ariosto , 1474-1533, Italian epic and lyric poet. As a youth he was a favorite at the court of Ferrara; later he was in the service of Ippolito I, Cardinal d'Este, and from 1517 until his death served Alfonso, duke of Ferrara. He was never properly rewarded by his patrons. While in the service of the cardinal, he began writing his masterpiece, the Orlando Furioso, published in its final form in 1532. This epic treatment of the Roland story, theoretically a sequel to the unfinished poem of Boiardo , greatly influenced Shakespeare, Milton, and Byron. It was intended to glorify the Este family as Vergil had glorified the Julians. Ariosto also wrote lyric verse of unequal merit, but he was among the first to write comedies in the vernacular (based loosely on Roman models), among them I Suppositi [the pretenders] and Il Negromante [the necromancer].

Bibliography: See the famous 16th-century translation of Orlando Furioso by Sir John Harington, ed. by R. McNulty (1972), as well as the recent verse translation by B. Reynolds (2 vol., 1975); studies by B. Croce (tr. 1920, repr. 1966), R. Griffin (1974), and A. R. Ascoli (1987).

Ariosto, Ludovico (1474–1533), Italian poet, author of Orlando Furioso (1532), the greatest of Italian romantic epics. He also wrote Italian and Latin lyrics and four comedies of which one, I Suppositi (1509), came through to Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew via Gascoigne's Supposes.

Ariosto, Ludovico (1474–1533), Italian poet. His Orlando Furioso (final version 1532), about the exploits of Roland (Orlando) and other knights of Charlemagne, was the greatest of the Italian romantic epics; Spenser used its narrative form as a model for his Faerie Queene.
Ariosto of the North in Byron's Childe Harold a name for Sir Walter Scott.