This view of the poem is reflected in the film version directed by Luca Ronconi, a work in marked contrast to his theatrical production which captured more convincingly Ariosto’s mastery of his complex material.

There are fundamental things still, even after four and a half centuries, to be discovered about the poem. Professor C. P. Brand considers it is ‘still essentially undefined and un-categorized’; the intermingling of the serious and the lighthearted, he says, ‘gave a stimulus to what was essentially a new genre’. Professor Brand is the first to have pointed out the thematic design which emerges from the grouping of stories of constancy and inconstancy in love round the central motif of Orlando’s madness.1 Professor Robert Griffin also recognizes what he calls the ‘structure of vision’ and ‘the larger patterns of the poem’, but he considers that Ariosto loses control in the second half:

The porous memory, ignorance, and general fallibility that plague [Ariosto] in the second half of the poem are consonant with the differentiation he establishes between his folly and God’s wisdom and with the parallel he stresses between himself and Orlando.2

There is, he thinks, ‘madness in the author’s method’. Nothing could be farther from the truth.

Ariosto many times assures the reader that he knows what he is doing. He may seem to have lost his way, but he knows which thread he is weaving into his fabric (a favourite metaphor with him); he knows the value of variety, not only of subject but of tone; and he sees more artistry in managing a swirling complexity than in designing a predictable symmetry.

The celebrated interruptions in Orlando Furioso are usually recognized as an inheritance from the narrative tradition of the cantastorie, whose intention was to arouse suspense in their listeners and an eagerness to return on another occasion to hear more. Thus Ariosto ends his cantos, and occasionally even episodes within a canto, at a moment of crisis. His intention is sometimes to produce a humorous effect, sometimes to heighten a dramatic situation or a tragic event, and always to beguile the reader with variety.

This, though true enough, amounts to little more than the technique of any competent writer of a serial. Something else is here involved, something of greater subtlety, which goes to the very heart of the problem which has always confronted a narrator: the problem, that is, of time and the sequence of events. When and where is an author to begin? Involved in this is his relationship with what he is narrating: is he to tell his story in the first or the third person? For some events, the viewpoint of the third person may be satisfactory; for others, especially those which antedate the main action, an evocation in the first person by one of the characters, usually the protagonist, has often been preferred. Homer and Virgil adopted this method of narration-within-the-narration, whereby events preceding those with which the story begins are related not directly by the author but, in the Odyssey, by Odysseus to King Alcinous and, in the Aeneid, by Aeneas to Dido.1 This change of viewpoint, though it provides first-hand participation, sacrifices the immediacy of direct action, of something happening here and now before the reader’s eyes. Whether the author uses past or present tense is not important; the effect of immediacy is achieved by the fact that the narration is made direct to the reader. Other effects of great beauty and solemnity are achieved by Homer and Virgil by the interplay of two planes of time; the solution they chose was in accordance with the totality of their poetic aims.

Although Ariosto learnt much from Homer and Virgil, he chose not to sacrifice the immediacy of direct narration. For all the major events of his poem he is himself the narrator. That is why he has to move so frequently from place to place (‘Now I must go in search of Astolfo’, ‘Now let me follow Angelica’, ‘Now let me see how Bradamante is faring’). He has to be there, to tell the reader at first hand what is happening. These are not interruptions for interruption’s sake; they are displacements of the author rendered necessary by his decision to sustain direct narration.

There are of course several exceptions and it is important to notice two things in connection with these. First, the stories related by one or other of the minor characters are always subordinate to the main plot. Secondly, these inset narrations are never interrupted; in other words, Ariosto always refrains from intruding into a function from which he has temporarily withdrawn. The reader has become a third party, an observer listening in, and so he remains until Ariosto takes over once more and re-admits him to the intimacy of direct communication. In fact this is never interrupted in any important sense.1

These considerations, though basic to the structure and unity of the poem, do not account for the arrangement of the material. From a deliberately contrived impression of random sequence, certain patterns of order emerge. The most significant of these can be grouped under three headings: Balance, Totality and Intricacy Resolved.

PATTERNS OF BALANCE

These are achieved by juxtaposing episodes either of similarity or of contrast. The most striking example of the latter is the placing side by side in succeeding cantos (xxνIII and xxIx) of the most extreme instances of female inconstancy and constancy. The bawdy tale of Fiammetta’s skill in deceiving two men who lie one each side of her, and the heroic tale of Isabella’s sacrifice of her life in order to remain faithful to Zerbino, offer the most violent contrast in the entire poem. A previous instance of immediate proximity had occurred in Cantos x and xi where two women, naked and helpless, are rescued from death by two knights; here Ruggiero who, on parting with the magic ring of reason, is fired with lust, is contrasted with Orlando who behaves with perfect decorum. He is a trustworthy escort also of Angelica and Isabella; his attack on Angelica at the height of his frenzy is consequently all the more startling. Orlando’s mad ness, caused by Angelica, is balanced by Rodomonte’s madness, caused by Doralice; later they are grappled together, wrestling on Rodomonte’s bridge, and pitch headlong together into the river. Both Angelica and Doralice find refuge with their lovers in a shepherd’s hut.