SOURCE: Wiggins, Peter DeSa. “The Furioso's Third Protagonist.”¹ Modern Language Notes 98, no. 1 (January 1983): 30-54.

In the following essay, Wiggins argues that Ariosto's rendering of Rodomonte suggests a complex, paradoxical, human character.

According to Italo Calvino, “Rodomonte è un colosso dall'anima sensibile.”² The author of Il cavaliere inesistente perceives the essence of Rodomonte's character, despite his ferocity in battle and his defiance of everything sacred, to be in his limitless mortification over the defeats dealt him by Doralice, Isabella, and Bradamante, one after another. Agreement with Calvino's point of view is easy to find in recent Ariosto criticism. One interpreter notes how “Rodomonte si umanizza impazzendo, al contrario di Orlando che impazzendo s'imbestia,”³ while another calls attention to Rodomonte's merciful rescue of Brandimarte after Fiordiligi moves him to pity her in the name of the dead Isabella and in the name of any love he may ever have experienced...