Richard Hodgens

The brave and handsome Orlando leaves Charlemagne's campaign in France to find his true love, the beautiful Angelica, who was being held by the Duke of Bavaria at the behest of Charlemagne who doesn't approve of the love between Orlando and Angelica. While Orlando is en route to find her, his cousin Rinaldo discovers that she has escaped from the Duke and comes across her in a woods. He tries to pursue the fleeing maiden, with whom he has fallen in love at first sight, but his horse takes another path, and he follows trying to catch the beast. Meanwhile, the maiden Bradamante disguises herself as a knight in order to find her true love Ruggiero, an African knight trapped by an evil sorceress in a magic castle.

And that's just for starters.

The tale follows each of these characters, switching back and forth, weaving in more and more characters (including Merlin), confounding and confusing the story more and more with each new twist in the tale. By the time I thought I'd finally caught onto a bit of the story, the narrator tells the reader that he is going to leave those characters and describe the events of another, and by the end, I finally didn't care much what was happening to whom. "Orlando Furioso" read like a Renaissance soap opera, with all the men being incredibly, ruggedly handsome and chivalric, and all the women miraculously fair of face, so much so that men fall hopelessly in love with a single glance. Don't get me wrong; I usually enjoy these types of multiple-stories-in-one, but I couldn't keep track of who was who and more than once mixed up which character was where.

I have a feeling, though, that back in the 16th Century, this would have been incredibly popular, and I can picture ladies of the court marveling over the heroic deeds and daring do. In fact, "Orlando Furioso" by Ludovico Ariosto, first published in 1516, is actually a sequel to "Orlando Innamorato" written by Count Matteo Maria Boiardo in the late 1400s. An incredibly popular sequel, I might add.

But for me, it was a bit too busy.… (más)