SOURCE: Marinelli, Peter V. “Neoplatonist Art: Ariosto, His Contemporaries, and His Friends.” In Ariosto and Boiardo: The Origins of Orlando Furioso, pp. 103-24. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1987.

In the following essay, Marinelli stresses the influence of Neoplatonist writers on the themes and structure of Orlando furioso.

He was altogether outside the philosophy of the Renaissance, whether Ficino's or Pomponazzi's, as he was outside every philosophy.

Benedetto Croce, Ariosto, Shakespeare and Corneille

Non allettava l'Ariosto la mensa dei platonici, e d'altro s'infervorava che della sapienza del Ficino.

Ariosto was not suckled at the table of the Platonists, and he was kindled by something other than the wisdom of Ficino.

Arturo Farinelli, “Lodovico Ariosto”

In direct competition with the Innamorato, the Furioso announces itself, formally and immediately, as a poem of “loves” (“amori”) against a background of war (“arme”), and Boiardo's two antiphonal actions of love and war harden...