Orlando Innamorato di Matteo Maria Boiardo: rielaborato e reso in versione abbreviata per ragazzi/Orlando in Love: abridged and translated for young readers

Abstract

Malory's Italian contemporary Matteo Maria Boiardo (1441-1494) brought together the epic Carolingian stories of the hero Roland and the Arthurian romances of the Breton cycle, thereby creating the new genre of the "romance epic. " His poem Orlando Innamorato (Orlando in Love) is populated with knights, damsels, giants, wizards,fairies, and monsters, in alternating episodes of love, magic, adventure, and warfare, sometimes told through the creative rewriting of classical texts such as Homer's Odyssey and Ovid's Metamorphoses. This 35,440 verse 'chivalric poem has never been adapted for young readers before, either in Italian or translation. This adaptation remains faithful to the fast-paced richness and playful flavor of the original. It also maintains Boiardo's technique of "entrelacement, weaving together various narrative threads in an alternating manner, while highlighting episodes that have a strong thematic coherence. Although Boiardo states that his goal is merely to entertain, his stories present positive and negative models of behavior which encourage loyalty, self-control, self-knowledge, perseverance, honesty, and a sense of responsibility to others. It is my hope that this taste of Boiardo's poem will arouse in the reader the desire to read the complete romance epic, available in a superb translation by Charles S. Ross.