SOURCE: Adams, Robert M. “Ariosto: Less Is More.” American Scholar (winter 1981/82): 95-102.

In the following essay, Adams suggests that the genre-shifting, playful subversiveness of Orlando furioso makes clear the limitations of a contemporary literary criticism and academic discourse.

Nobody gets less chance to read books for pleasure, all the way through, for their own sakes, than a professor of literature. The myth, of course, is quite different. The professor is supposed to sit in his study, placidly reading one Great Book after another, sipping and sampling and passing judgment, like a wine connoisseur with an infinite cellar and infinite time at his disposal. Hardly so, hardly so at all. His reading is really done by way of preparing for a class, criticizing a paper, advising on a thesis, or writing a paper of his own; his time is divided into five- and ten-minute snippets by conferences, phone calls...