SOURCE: Reynolds, Anne. “The Sixteenth-Century Polemic over Ariosto and Tasso, and the Significance of Galilei's Ariosto ‘Postille’.”¹ In Miscellanea di italianistica: In memoria de Mario Santoro, edited by Michele Cataudella, pp. 105-24. Napoli: Edizioni Scientifiche Italiane, 1995.

In the following essay, Reynolds lays out the key theories of seventeenth-century literary critics while reflecting on Galileo Galilei's views on Orlando furioso.

It is clear that in his literary criticism Galilei owes a profound debt to classical theoreticians, including Cicero, Horace, Quintilian, Demetrius Phalereus, Longinus, and Aristotle². Whether his knowledge of these authors was direct or one filtered via the commentaries and critical tracts which owed their inspiration to these authors remains to be established conclusively. What is clear, however, is that Galilei's critical interests mirror in many instances those of his contemporaries and, in more instances, the interests of sixteenth-century theoreticians in general. Galilei's focus on the “veste” and “corpo...