Latinizzazioni di stanze dell’Orlando furioso tra manoscritti e stampe

This essay focuses on the Latin translations, full and partial, printed and manuscript, of Ludovico Ariosto’s Orlando furioso composed from the mid-sixteenth to the beginning of the nineteenth centuries. The aim is to reflect on the different translations and motivations behind these initiatives, also in the light of the contemporary strategies of reading and canonization of the poem. By examining the translations of some specific passages, which had an enormous success from the point of view of rewritings, i.e. the incipit of the poem, the proemial stanzas of cantos II and IV, and a stanza from Sacripante’s lament in canto I, the metrical, stylistic, lexical and syntactic choices will be discussed, with reference to translators such as Giacomo di Montegnacco, Visito Maurizio, Volrad von Plessen, Ludovico Annibale Della Croce, Antonio Dionisi, Raffaele Fagnani, Girolamo Cicala and Torquato Barbolani.