Published online by Cambridge University Press: 20 November 2018
Whatever the poem's ambiguities, the Orlando Furioso's ending has always seemed allusively unproblematic: in the words of Ariosto's sixteenth-century English translator, Sir John Harington, “in the death of Rodomont, to shew himself a perfect imitator of Virgill, [Ariosto] endeth just as Virgil ends his Aeneads with the death of Turnus.”
He sank his blade in fury in Turnus’ chest.
Then all the body slackened in death's chill,
And with a groan for that indignity
His spirit fled into the gloom below.
(Aeneid 12. 950-52)
I thank my colleagues Joseph O'Connor, Jason Rosenblatt, and Penn Szittya for their helpful readings of an earlier draft of this essay, and Leona Fisher for translations from Salviati and Sassetti (in Brown and Castaldi). I began this essay in a Folger Institute Seminar directed by Daniel Javitch, who also read an earlier version of this essay, and to whom I am especially grateful.