«Lo spettacolo enorme e disonesto» of Ariosto’s misgovernment

Abstract

A well-established and influential wave of literary criticism has restored Ariosto’s work abrasive historical-political dimension, subtracting it from the ahistorical harmony of Crocian tradition . Part of this engagée dimension emerges in the poem through situations and places that, in various ways, have a dystopian vocation, inasmuch    the alternative and different social orders on which they are based echo the dissonant wounds of sixteenth-century Italian society. The island of Alcina or that of Ebuda, like the iniquitous and despotic kingdoms of Cimosco, of the murderous females or of Marganorre, appear to be ‘other’ worlds in which  the nightmares of a generation of thinkers and men of letters, helplessly witnessing the crumbling of the humanistic utopia, continually emerge.. The objective of this contribution is to explore  Ariosto’s fervid  dystopian imagination to detect the political and ethical functionality of such narrative inserts, as mirrors and scarecrows of the ambiguities of Italian Renaissance society, a gangrenous system, engrossed in a political and cultural crisis that now appears ineluctable and has entered the predatory orbit of the other European powers.