The Orlando Furioso from Print to Digital: Five Centuries of Reading Ariosto

AN INTERNATIONAL SYMPOSIUM

November 11 & 12, 2016

Organized by Antonio Ricci, York University & York Fellow at the Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies

Hosted by the Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies at Victoria College in the University of Toronto

The first edition of Ludovico Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso was printed in Ferrara in 1516. The radically innovative romance-epic quickly affirmed itself as a bestseller, and over the last five centuries it has exerted a profound influence on literary traditions and offered a rich source for the visual arts, theatre, and music. This symposium celebrates the quincentenary of the Furioso by gathering in Toronto a distinguished group of scholars to consider the poem’s fortunes from the perspective of reading. Approaching the question from a broad range of disciplines, the speakers will discuss the kinds of readers intended by Ariosto, the modes of reading envisaged by printers and editors as well as those enacted by critics, translators and writers, and the visual readings imagined by artists. The hope is that the exploration of the Furioso’s complex historical reception will contribute to an understanding of the evolving experience of reading in the digital age.

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We gratefully acknowledge the following for their generous support: Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada; Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies, Victoria College in the University of Toronto; Comitato Nazionale per il V Centenario della pubblicazione dell’Orlando Furioso, Ministero dei Beni e delle Attività Culturali e del Turismo; Faculty of Liberal Arts and Professional Studies, York University; Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies; Emilio Goggio Chair in Italian Studies, University of Toronto; Graduate Program in Humanities, York University; Department of History, York University; Collaborative Program in Book History and Print Culture, University of Toronto; Ethnonationalism, Transnationalism and Media Culture Project, York University; Department of Language Studies, University of Toronto Mississauga.

The Toronto Consort’s production of The Italian Queen of France includes musical compositions inspired by the Orlando Furioso. Symposium attendees receive a 10% discount with registration

Current list of Orlando Furioso centerary celebrations and related events 

For more information on the symposium, please contact the Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies

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