SOURCE: Javitch, Daniel. “Narrative Discontinuity in the Orlando Furioso and its Sixteenth Century Critics.” Modern Language Notes 103, no. 1 (January 1988): 50-74.

In the following essay, Javitch examines the critical reception of Orlando furioso in the sixteenth century to illustrate the growing significance of Neoclassical ideas.

The many actions, characters, and various adventures of chivalric romance required multiple plot lines which had to be interrupted constantly in order for each of them to progress more or less simultaneously. So when Ariosto chose to make his Orlando Furioso a sequel to Boiardo's Orlando Innamorato, he opted for a discontinuous narrative. Moreover, the technique of entrelacement or interweaving which allowed the narrator to advance his various plots by shifting back and forth among them invited—in fact, had built into it—authorial intrusion. Whenever Ariosto has to abandon one of his plot lines he intervenes as narrator to announce it's time to...