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This French medal has been minted in 1977 in France to commemorate an Italian Renaissance humanist, Ludovico ARIOSTO (1474-1533).
This is medal has been designed by the French medalist, Riccardo SCARPA.
Ludovico Ariosto (8 September 1474 – 6 July 1533) was an Italian poet. He is best known as the author of the romance epic Orlando Furioso (1516). The poem, a continuation of Matteo Maria Boiardo's Orlando Innamorato, describes the adventures of Charlemagne, Orlando, and the Franks as they battle against the Saracens with diversions into many sideplots. Ariosto composed the poem in the ottava rima rhyme scheme and introduced narrative commentary throughout the work.
Orlando furioso (The Frenzy of Orlando, more literally Mad Orlando; in Italian furioso is seldom capitalized) is an Italian romantic epic by Ludovico Ariosto which has exerted a wide influence on later culture.
av. The portrait of Ludovico Ariosto.
rv. The scene from his work Orlando Furioso
diameter – 73 mm, (2⅞”)
weight – 218.40 gr (7.70 oz)
metal – bronze, mint patina
Ludovico Ariosto
Ariosto was born in Reggio Emilia, where his father Niccolò Ariosto was commander of the citadel. He was the oldest of 10 children and was seen as the successor to the patriarchal position of his family. From his earliest years, Ludovico was very interested in poetry, but he was obliged by his father to study law.
After five years of law, Ariosto was allowed to read classics under Gregorio da Spoleto. Ariosto's studies of Greek and Latin literature were cut short by Spoleto's move to France to tutor Francesco Sforza. Shortly after this, Ariosto's father died.
After the death of his father, Ludovico Ariosto was compelled to forgo his literary occupations and take care of his family, whose affairs were in disarray. Despite his family obligations, Ariosto managed to write some comedies in prose as well as lyrical pieces. Some of these attracted the notice of Cardinal Ippolito d'Este, who took the young poet under his patronage and appointed him one of the gentlemen of his household. Este compensated Ariosto poorly for his efforts; the only reward he gave the poet for Orlando Furioso, dedicated to him, was the question, "Where did you find so many stories, Master Ludovic?" Ariosto later said that the cardinal was ungrateful, that he deplored the time which he spent under his yoke, and that if he received some small pension, it was not to reward him for his poetry — which the prelate despised — but for acting as a messenger.
The cardinal went to Hungary in 1518, and wished Ariosto to accompany him. The poet excused himself, pleading ill health, his love of study, and the need to care for his elderly mother. His excuses were not well-received, and he was denied even an interview. Ariosto and d'Este got into a heated argument, and Ariosto was promptly dismissed from service.
The cardinal's brother, Alfonso, duke of Ferrara, now took Ariosto under his patronage. By then, Ariosto had already distinguished himself as a diplomat, chiefly on the occasion of two visits to Rome as ambassador to Pope Julius II. The fatigue of one of these journeys brought on an illness from which he never recovered, and on his second mission he was nearly killed by order of the Pope, who happened at the time to be in conflict with Alfonso.
On account of the war, his salary of 84 crowns a year was suspended, and it was withdrawn altogether after the peace. Because of this, Ariosto asked the duke either to provide for him, or to allow him to seek employment elsewhere. He was appointed to the
In 1508 Ariosto's play Cassaria appeared, and the next year I Suppositi was fist acted in Ferrara and ten years later in the Vatican. A prose edition was published in
In 1516, the first version of the Orlando Furioso in 40 cantos, was published at
The third and final version of the Orlando Furioso, in 46 cantos, appeared on September 8, 1532.
Throughout Ariosto's writing are narratorial comments dubbed by Dr. Daniel Javich as "Cantus Interruptus". These sections are short breaks in the text in which the narrator destroys the fourth wall and talks directly to the audience. Ariosto uses it throughout his works.
For example, in Canto II, stanza 30, of Orlando Furioso, the narrator says:
But I, who still pursue a varying tale,
Must leave awhile the Paladin, who wages
A weary warfare with the wind and flood;
To follow a fair virgin of his blood.
Some have attributed this piece of metafiction as one component of the "Sorriso ariostesco" or Ariosto smile, the wry sense of humor that Ariosto adds to the text.
In explaining this humor, Thomas Greene, in Descent from Heaven, says,
the two persistent qualities of Ariosto's language are first, serenity - the evenness and self-contented assurance with which it urbanely flows, and second, brilliance - the Mediterranean glitter and sheen which neither dazzle nor obscure but confer on every object its precise outline and glinting surface. Only occasionally can Ariosto's language truly be said to be witty, but its lightness and agility create a surface which conveys a witty effect. Too much wit could destroy even the finest poem, but Ariosto's graceful brio is at least as difficult and for narrative purposes more satisfying.
Orlando furioso (The Frenzy of Orlando, more literally Mad Orlando; in Italian furioso is seldom capitalized) is an Italian romantic epic by Ludovico Ariosto which has exerted a wide influence on later culture. The earliest version appeared in 1516, although the poem was not published in its complete form until 1532. Orlando Furioso is a continuation of Matteo Maria Boiardo's unfinished romance Orlando Innamorato ("
The poem is divided into forty-six cantos, each containing a variable number of eight-line stanzas in ottava rima (a rhyme scheme of abababcc). Ottava rima had been used in previous Italian romantic epics, including Luigi Pulci's Morgante and Boiardo's Orlando Innamorato. Ariosto's work is 38,736 lines long in total, making it one of the longest poems in European literature.
Orlando Furioso won immediate fame. Around the middle of the 16th century, some Italian critics such as Gian Giorgio Trissino complained that the poem failed to observe the unity of action as defined by Aristotle, by having multiple plots rather than a single main story. The French poet Pierre de Ronsard and the Italian poet Torquato Tasso both felt that Orlando Furioso lacked structural unity. Ariosto's defenders, such as Giovanni Battista Giraldi, replied that it was not a Classical epic but a romanzo, a genre unknown to Aristotle; therefore his standards were irrelevant. Nevertheless, the strictures of the Classical critics influenced the next great Italian epic, Torquato Tasso's Gerusalemme Liberata (1581). Tasso tried to combine Ariosto's freedom of invention with a more unified plot structure. In the following decades, Italian critics argued over the respective merits of the two epics. Partisans of
There have been several verse translations of Orlando Furioso into English. The first one was by John Harington, published in 1591. William Huggins' and Henry Boyd's translations were published in 1757 and 1784, respectively. John Hoole's 1783 translation used rhyming couplets. William Stewart Rose produced an eight volume translation beginning publication in 1823 and ending in 1831. Barbara Reynolds published a verse translation in 1975, while the most recent verse translation (extremely abridged), by David Slavitt, was published in 2009.
A few translations have also been made in prose format. A.H. Gilbert's translation was published in 1954. Richard Hodgens planned a multivolume translation, whose first volume, subtitled The Ring of Angelica, was published by Ballantine Books as the fifty-fourth volume of its celebrated Ballantine Adult Fantasy series in October, 1973. The remaining volumes do not appear to have seen print. Most recently, Guido Waldman's complete prose translation was first published in 1973.