Every knight is 'undefeatable', every woman 'shames all others by her virtue', and it does not escape Ariosto that making all of them remarkable only makes more obvious the fact that none of them are.Īriosto's style flies on wings, lilting here and there, darting, soaring. His use of hyperbole and oxymoron prefigures the great metaphysical poets, and like them, these are tools of rhetoric and satire. Though his work is full of prejudice and idealism, it is constantly shifting, so that now one side seems right, and now the other. Perhaps it speaks more to the age I live in than that of the author, but I'm always surprised to find a reasonable, rational mind on the other end of the pen. I mean, I feel like I’m Isabella d'Este and it was written for me! While I’m gathering my thoughts and/or finishing the other half, here is the review by Osip Mandelstam. I'm completely and utterly besotted by this poem.
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