La crisi italiana, i turchi, l'altro. Una lettura del XVII canto dell'Orlando furioso

The seventeenth canto of the Orlando furioso is not counted among the most relevant in Ariosto’s masterpiece, being merely considered as one of those connection canto necessary to the warp of the narration. However, this canto includes an invective which still deserves additional research, also in view of some recent studies. Its peculiarity is to be found in the literary space of the early Sixteenth-century civil classicism, to which it can be compared on the basis of themes, modes, forms, clearly taking into account the broader frame of the Italian Renaissance political and cultural crisis. This rereading allows us to regard the theme of the encounter/clash with the Ottoman power and its culture as much more than an occasional modernisation of the Carolingian subject of the Furioso, but rather as a lurking motif that runs through the entire poem and seems to give voice to a collective political unconscious.