SOURCE: Finnuci, Valeria. “The Masquerade of Masculinity: Astolfo and Jocondo in Orlando furioso, Canto 28.” In Renaissance Transactions: Ariosto and Tasso, edited by Valeria Finucci, pp. 215-45. Durham & London: Duke University Press, 1999.

In the following essay, Finucci offers a psychoanalytic reading of gender and disguise in Canto 28 of Ariosto's Orlando furioso, and finds that gender identities were not clearly defined and that the boundaries between normal, normative, and deviant behavior in the Furioso appear as fluid and permeable as in the early twenty-first century.

“Mirror, mirror on the wall, Who's the fairest of them all?” 

—J. Grimm, “Snow White”

“Madamina, il catalogo è questo Delle belle che amò il padron mio, Un catalogo egli è che ho fatt'io, Osservate, leggete con me.” 

—L. Ponte, Don Giovanni

Stories are written to be read. So what do we make of an author who urges his readers to skip the very tale he is...