Latin Poetry

 Ludovico Ariosto (1474-1533), one of Italy's greatest poets, was a leading figure of sixteenth-century Italian humanism. After some years working in the household of Cardinal Ippolito d'Este, to whom he dedicated his dazzling romance epic Orlando Furioso (1516), Ariosto settled in Ferrara under the patronage of Ippolito's brother Alfonso. He continued to write throughout his life, publishing 214 letters, five plays, seven satires in verse, and dozens of lyric poems in Italian and Latin. Ariosto's Latin poems, translated into English for the first time in this volume, are remarkable for their erudition, technical virtuosity, and playfulness. This edition provides a new Latin text, the first to be based on a collation of the autograph manuscript and editio princeps, and offers a unique insight into the Latin formation of one of the Renaissance's foremost vernacular writers.

Review: "This important addition to the I Tatti Renaissance Library series offers the first English translation of Ludovico Ariosto's lyric productions in Latin...It meaningfully contributes to the scholarly understanding of the texts that it restores while also making them accessible to any anglophone reader...Represents a gift and an invitation to researchers in the field of Renaissance studies at large."-Alessandro Giammei, Renaissance Quarterly