Canto XXXVI

This essay analyses Canto 36 of Ariosto’s Orlando furioso, opened by a contrast between the courtesy of ancient warriors and the brutal cruelty of modern warfare. Special attention is then paid to the figure of Bradamante and to her virtues (and flaws) as a woman-warrior, focusing on her behaviour during her half-foolish punitive raid against Ruggiero and Marfisa, whom she wrongly suspects to have an affair. The implications of her making use of the golden lance are investigated by drawing analogies with other magical weapons of the poem and discussing some small and yet revealing variants introduced by the author only in 1532. The last part of the essay explores the intertextual origins (including Boiardo and Andrea da Barberino) and the narrative consequences of Atlante’s revelations that Ruggiero and Marfisa are twins and of Ruggiero’s exposition of the Trojans origins of their family – and of the Este family that is going to spring out of it, closing the circle between encomiastic genealogy and inheritance of virtues (and flaws?).