SOURCE: Martinez, Ronald L. “Two Odysseys: Rinaldo's Po Journey and the Poet's Homecoming in Orlando furioso.” In Renaissance Transactions: Ariosto and Tasso, edited by Valeria Finucci, pp. 17-25. Durham & London: Duke University Press, 1999.

In the following selection, Martinez examines Homer's Odyssey as a source for Ariosto's Orlando furioso and compares the journeying and homecoming of the poet-narrator of the Furioso with that of Rinaldo, the character whose journey frames the conclusion of the 1516 version of the poem.

Rinaldo's journey from Paris to Lipadusa frames the concluding episodes of the 1516 Orlando furioso, leading directly into the final exordium and its presentation of the narrator arriving by ship in port after the long, forty-canto excursion of his poem.¹ As the longest and most complex episode in the poem, Rinaldo's episode offers narrative, ethical, and cultural implications I propose to discuss in this essay. Beyond the intrinsic interest of Rinaldo's character...