Grace and Ingratitude

This chapter examines Ludovico Ariosto's Orlando furioso (1532) as an outstanding example of literary grace. It follows the judgement of sixteenth-century literary commentator and polygraph Lodovico Dolce. The chapter first mines Dolce's many commentaries, paratextual notes, appreciations, and treatises on poetics and aesthetics for a sense of just what he meant when he declared Ariosto the Renaissance poet of grace. Next, the chapter looks to Ariosto himself and focuses both on the poet's writing and on the emblems and images he used to embellish successive editions of his poem. In this encounter between grace in word and image, it offers an understanding of how Ariosto anticipated Dolce's reading while varying the terms of that reception.