The Italian Love Poetry of Ludovico Ariosto: Court Culture and Classicism. Giada Guassardo. Biblioteca dell’“Archivum Romanicum.” Serie I: Storia, Letteratura, Paleografia 508. Florence: Olschki, 2021. viii + 244 pp. €26.

Abstract

knights deprive the narrative of a central focus, they reverberate with each other through formulaic language and decorations, allowing readers to fi ll in the missing parts. The fi fteenth-century Tavola Ritonda, with its magni fi cent pen-and-ink drawings interspersed throughout the text in Tuscan volgare , embodies the evolution of Italian Arthurian manuscripts and validates Molteni ’ s analytical approach: both image and word work together, establishing a system of mutual entrelacement , texts with texts, images with images — and, as Molteni so brilliantly proves in this excellent study, images with texts.