>Produce the greatest epic since Homer
>Get ignored by /lit/
This is an Orlando Furioso thread. Reply only if after having exhausted your horse, you supported it on your shoulders and dragged its dead corpse pursuing your promised virgin who got fucked by a moor.
Yes, it's better than the divine comedy.
Not many people speak morrocan
>>7524441
Wha- it's written in medieval italian
Agreed op, definitely an indicator of good taste, that one flies under everyone's radar.
>>7524450
same thing in those days
>>7524435
what's the best translation?
>>7524435
Pic unrelated?
Or do we really have such a detailed picture of Virgil?
>>7524459
Harington's is good verse
Waldmann's is prose
Slavitt's is bad verse
William Stewart Rose's first 9 Cantos are available here:
https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Orlando_Furioso/Canto_I
He respects the original ottava rima, which is pretty good
>>7524435
>Get ignored by /lit/
Most people here haven't even read Homer, so i don't know exactly what you were expecting.
I've seen a copy of Orlando Furioso exactly once in the bookshelf threads. This board is not patrician enough.
>When Orlando learns the truth, he goes mad with despair and rampages through Europe and Africa destroying everything in his path. The English knight Astolfo journeys to Ethiopia on the hippogriff to find a cure for Orlando's madness.
>He flies up in Elijah's flaming chariot to the moon, where everything lost on earth is to be found, including Orlando's wits. He brings them back in a bottle and makes Orlando sniff them, thus restoring him to sanity. (At the same time Orlando falls out of love with Angelica, as the author explains that love is itself a form of insanity.)
>>7525133
Well I'm sold
>>7524435
> not Camões
>>7524435
Orlando Furioso is my absolute favorite work of art, not just in literature. Criminally obscure.
>>7526781
>Criminally obscure.
anyone who actually reads has at least knows what it is, and most actual readers have read it.
He is hardly obscure to Englishers as an Italian poet. I'd say more anglophones people read him than they do Tasso and Leopardi and Cavalcanti and Petrarch combined.
>>7524499
>Harington's is good verse
definitely, I think it was decent considering the quality of verse translations of the era. Translated it looks awful in comparison to Spenser in the original, but that's going to be an obvious consequence.
>>7524455
ARIOSTO IS NOT OBSCURE
If you want to cram obscure poets, buy a troubadour anthology and talk about how Pound's translation of Arnaut Daniel's Doutz Brais E Critz breathes new life into such a classic of poetry from the 1190s southeast Provencal scene. Don't brag about reading the second most famous non-roman Italian poet.
>>7526833
(and I'm not using "obscure" as a badge of honor, I'm just hoping you don't walk around a university near actual readers bragging about reading what they've read years ago. Professors and readers alike will laugh at you.)
>>7526833
>fuckin douche doesnt know that "most readers" means people who read twilight
orlando furioso is obscure in the sense that most people have no idea what the fuck you're talking about. hell i live in an area where if you ask about dostoevsky someone will say bless you.
>>7526847
"most readers" aren't actual "readers". I think we both know that. Well, at least I THOUGHT you knew I meant it, so I assumed it. Oops.
So ACTUAL readers, people who read ACTUAL books, and read ACTUAL poetry. Walk up to any decent professor at any decent university in English and they've certainly read it. If not, find a better university.
> hell i live in an area
yes we all do, but our hearts are in the library where the 3 or so actual readers will laugh at you for thinking Ariosto is obscure. He's not. It would be a crime if he were.
>>7526847
it's not our fault you live in a cultural wasteland anon don't take it out on us
>>7526855
>actual readers
some ol' pretentious shit right there, bub. you've steeped too long in your forums if you think ariosto is widely spoken of. you really need to pull your head out of your ass.
>>7526862
two different posters. That aside (I'm the long-post poster) the forums are actually garbage and I question how much most people here read. I'm only here because I want to see what's going on in internet land before I shut off my computer for the month of January and read.
Go to a University and get laughed at, I don't give a fuck. Take your "obscure" badge of honor with you. I'm going to finish annotating this obscure novel called Madame Bovary and go to bed.
Nobody on the street ever talks about Flaubert!
So i want to be enlightened, furioso and homer what else should i read and please tell me what from them i know from homer is odyssey but what else
>>7526873
I think that people here do read, but also that most don't take it seriously like you do. There are probably a lot of young people here who use books as nothing more than a prop for their identity.
>>7526879
uh well welcome to the shitty literature forum on shitchan, first of all. second of all, the poet is Ariosto, the work is Orlando Furioso. Homer is connected to the Iliad and the Odyssey.
You should just read a worthwhile translation of both to start. Pope is the valid choice for Homer, Harrington for Ariosto. If you like Homer, there's a canon ahead of you to read. If not, there's a canon ahead of you to read. If you like Ariosto, there's Spenser and Tasso and Sidney and Shakespeare and a whole canon ahead and behind you. If you don't like Ariosto at all, there's Spenser and Tasso and Sidney and Shakespeare and a whole canon ahead and behind you. Have fun.
>>7526873
obscure badge of honor? what in the fuck are you talking about? it's sad that there are so many pretentious fuckers on this board.
You say "oh go talk to your english professor" well no shit an english professor will know exactly what you're talking about, but his students most likely won't. let's be reasonable about this. obscurity doesnt mean shit to me, i love popular fiction as well as unpopular. but don't go around telling people that an author that doesn't pass through lips but once every few months globally is some hugely known author. Madame Bovary in comparison is actually widely known. let's do a very simple and unbiased test shall we?
Goodreads (bitch all you want, i don't care)
madame bovary: 145,447 Ratings
dante's inferno: 88,179 Ratings
orlando furioso: 1,756 Ratings
a very clear and simply put example of how obscure orlando furioso is compared to say, Flaubert.
>>7525133
i will certainly be buying a copy of this
>>7526898
Perhaps, but a lot of college students switch to English (when I say "a lot", I've met 2 who take it seriously out of about 100 others I've talked to who are in it to be comfy, retarded high school english teachers who don't read) because they read something that hit them. It's different for everyone, but it ranges from Pynchon's V. to some of Keats to Shakespeare to Kipling to Mishima (mine, personally) to Albee to whatever else. And it's fine to like these authors, but most don't seem to get over their initial fascination and branch out. You get a lot of "have you heard of Pynchon and Ginsberg and Gaddis oh oh oh have you heard of Philip K Dick he took drugs and this really cool western writer who's like tarantino except instead of blown up brains there's blown up sentences and he's called Cormac......."
Most don't take it beyond that. And they post on /lit/.
Is it anything like the Song of Roland? Because ignoring the translation the poem was pretty lousy.
I don't think that's a good comparison. He stands head and tails above all the Renaissance writers. Pastiche shit like Lusiads, which tries to be Homer/Virgil, are garbage compared to something as vibrant and imaginative as Furioso. Also much better than Tasso.
>>7526922
well there's so many surviving Chansons and that of Roland is one of them, so all you have to do is look harder...
If you want something that's GOOD and like it, try reading the troubadours and trouveres. Also, obligatory Chaucer. Chaucer is God.
>>7526909
If we're talking poetry, which we were until Flaubert was dropped in (probably not a good way to make my point I guess, though you brought up Dostoevsky which everyone has heard about) then Ariosto isn't obscure at all. Name an italian poet as famous as either Dante or Ariosto with your GR criteria. No Latin poets allowed. Have fun with that while I grab some water and maybe drink it and go to sleep and wake up and see that you haven't found one because other than about 10 major poets nobody reads poetry and among people who do, Ariosto is very often read. Nobody who reads poetry beyond garbage like the confessionals has NOT heard about Ariosto.
>>7526922
It speaks of the same Roland, but the whole thing is conceived as some kind of satire or a new take on the "chansons de geste" tradition. Basically the keyword here is FUN
>>7526930
okay, so, now we're moving the goalpost from "actual readers" to "actual readers of italian poetry"
anyway, Boccacio.
The Decameron: 21,941 ratings
>>7526951
are you a fucking moron? the decameron is in prose
and no, not "readers of italian poetry", I mean "actual readers", which means people who read poetry
>>7526956
>Name an italian poet
>>7526959
>>Name an italian poet
> poet
you're supposed to read the request first ya know :-DDDDDD
alright I'm off this shitty forum for a while, go pretend that one of the most read Italian writers of all time is obscure, I don't care. Go judge obscurity by the reading habits millennial pop culture consumers on goodreads. alright. Happy new year and to all a merry night
>>7526967
>Giovanni Boccaccio was an Italian writer, poet, correspondent of Petrarch, and an important Renaissance humanist. (wiki)
>poet
>poet
>poet
>poet
>poet
see, i can be mocking and douchey too!
yes please leave. you're stinking it up for people who arent so well read as "actual readers" such as yourself.
>Those parts where he praises his patrons
It's fucking hilarious. The way he puts himself out of harm's way while at the same time making it obvious they're idiots by repeating over and over how they're great men is genius
>>7526967
What about Petrarch ?
>>7527007
the funny thing about that goodreads number for orlando, is that it's for a prose translation. the poetic translation has more like 200 ratings.
hell, if you look up "italian poets" on google, you can't even find him on the little black slide there. you'd think he'd be there being the most famous italian poet just after dante. i'm sorry that the guy is so mad that there are quite a few people (if not most) who even love to read poetry, have no fucking clue who ludovico ariosto is.
>>7526922
Roland/Cid/medieval "epics" are shit. Avoid them. Medieval literature in general. Stick with the Renaissance.
>>7527063
hear hear
>>7527063
Woah buddy, I find that statement too harsh.
Do you really want him to miss out on François Villon or Arnaut Daniel ?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fran%C3%A7ois_Villon#Alleged_criminal_activities
Canto IX, 88
>And neither is Orlando hanging around.
>He departs, having taken but one
>thing - that machine of fire, iron, and sound,
>a weapon of mass destruction, that terrible gun,
>which he does not want for his own use, having found
>it to be unfair and unsporting: only a son
>of a bitch would think to use it in a fight.
>It isn't at all appropriate for a knight.
89
>It ought to be destroyed, he thinks, to keep
>anyone from ever making use
>of it against men to kill and to estrepe.
>He cannot think of any sane excuse
>for it to exist, and he throws it into the deep
>of the sea to make men and women safer, whose
>futures will not be blighted by such an obscene,
>inelegant, and dangerous machine.
90
>He also finds it politically incorrect
>in the way it makes a weak man equal to
>the strongest, so that all rank and respect
>are fundamentally threatened, for otherwise who
>would know his place or observe the correct
>distinctions? Civilization as he knew
>it would be over, equality would reign.
>The very idea gives our paladin pain.
This is fucking gold
>>7527106
so you're saying orlando is pro gun control? don't tell /pol/. they'd burn the libraries to the ground.
>>7527112
Didn't you get the twist at the third stanza ? Orlando is pro gun control because guns make it too easy to kill and this threatens the established order. He's all about swordfights because Orlando is basically a proto-murrican motherfucker who only wants to be judged on his strength. He's an abstracted persona of /pol/ turned to derision 500 years before /pol/
>>7527128
oh i dunno, he still doesnt want guns. i think that's exactly why /pol/ is against gun control, to keep the meatheads out of power. guns allow the weak white man to kill the physically superior negroid and all that jazz. i think he's more an abstracted persona of /fit/, honestly. brilliant stuff though, i've had orlando furioso high up on my list and i'm glad that it was for a good reason. looking forward to reading it.
>>7527112
Also, there's a hilarious moment later on where the necromancer picks up the cannon from the sea deep and gives it to the Germans. The germans learn to use it after having blown themselves up a few times and all the while Ariosto ponders whether or not the devil actually invented gunpowder
>>7527132
man, that sounds even more amusing than some of don quixote. i'll be glad when i'm through with my current post-modern kick. it always seems like they push too hard for much too little compared to the elder writers.
here's what /pol/ had to say about this whole matter, btw:
>Ariosto, an Italian quck. Also, Orlando is a beta quck who goes insane over a woman.
I wanted to read it with a bilingual version (French/Italian) but I don't had much time this year
Maybe in 2016
Also, what do you think of La Gerusalemme liberata? Is it as good as Orlando Furioso ?
>>7527309
>Also, what do you think of La Gerusalemme liberata?
It's another style. It's great in its own way, but whereas Ariosto's narrative voice is a lighthearted "Look how ridiculous they are ! And aren't we the same as them ?", Tasso takes these torments much more seriously.
But inversely, there is a lyrical passion in Tasso that you won't find in Ariosto, and he has a truly sophoclean sense of tragedy. I believe that greatly contributed to the posterity of his Gerusalemme: The verses on Tancrede being torn between desire and duty are intemporal.
Is it worth it to try Waldman or should I switch it up to a translation in verse?
>>7527333
I'd recommend a verse translation. I know someone said Slavit's is bad but honestly it's quite good. It flows well and is modernized without destroying the original meaning
>>7526919
>get hit by the Mish
>switch to English literature
Anon, you move in mysterious ways.
>>7526967
This isn't a forum.
>>7527299
do you have friends, anon? i hope this isnt your last bastion for human companionship.
none english wirter can stand to the epicness of tasso and ariosto. Italian is the greatest /lit/ language.
