Orlando Furioso

Ludovico Ariosto’s sprawling Renaissance epic picks up the old Charlemagne legends and sends them spinning in a dozen directions at once. The knight Orlando loses his reason when Angelica, the woman he adores, runs off with a Saracen soldier, and his rage carries him across half the known world. Around that central madness Ariosto weaves the courtship of the warrior maiden Bradamante and the Saracen Ruggiero, whose line the poet flatters as ancestors of his patrons. Magic rings, a hippogriff, enchanted castles and even a voyage to the moon crowd the pages. First printed in 1516 and later expanded, it shaped centuries of European romance and still reads with astonishing energy and comic slyness. This free PDF and EPUB edition offers William Stewart Rose’s verse translation.