SOURCE: Lee, Judith. “The English Ariosto: The Elizabethan Poet and the Marvelous.” Studies in Philology 80, no. 3 (summer 1983): 277-99.

In the following essay, Lee analyzes how a 1591 English translation of Ariosto's Orlando furioso both deliberately misinterprets critical elements of the work and demonstrates how the Elizabethans' concept of “the marvelous” both borrowed from and modified the elements of magic and myth found in the Furioso.

Sir John Harington's Orlando furioso in English Heroical Verse (1591) was an anomaly—as a translation, as a poem, and as a work of literary criticism. Harington took unusual freedom with his text, even in an age which considered translation an act of “revision,” imitation rather than duplication of the original.¹ He compressed large sections of the Italian and added several of his own stanzas. In addition, because the Orlando furioso itself raised the central critical questions of the age—questions about the role of...