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Rescuing Ovid from the AllegorizersAuthor(s): Daniel JavitchSource: Comparative Literature, Vol. 30, No. 2 (Spring, 1978), pp. 97-107Published by: Duke University Press on behalf of the University of OregonStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1770177 .Accessed: 20/04/2011 21:20

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volume xxx

spring 198 number 2

DANIEL JAVITCH

Rescuing Ovid

From the Allegorizers

VER SINCE the Orlando Furioso first appeared readers have rec- ognized that Ruggiero's rescue of the bound Angelica from the

Orca, monster of the sea (X.xci-cxv), is modeled on Perseus' rescue of Andromeda in Ovid's Metamtorphoses (IV.663-764). In one of the earliest printed commentaries to note the imitation, Simon Fornari, in his Spositione sopra lOrlando Furioso (1549-1550), observes: "Nel presente argomento dell'orca divoratrice & d'Angelica legata, e di Rug- giero su'l cavallo volante il nostro poeta imita Ovidio; il quale simil- mente descrive Andromeda esposta ad essere divorata dal mostro ma- rino; che poi fosse stata liberata da Perseo; il quale dopo ch'ebbe uccisa Medusa venia per l'aria volando con li pennate talari prestatigli da Mer- curio."l

While Ariosto's invitation to compare the rescue of Angelica with that of Andromeda was taken up from the start, no one has commented on how his use of Ovid's episode radically differs from the treatment it received through the late Middle Ages and right up to the publication of the Furioso. One of Ariosto's marked departures from the original al- ready suggests that he was relying on intervening treatments and allud- ing to them: his inclusion of the winged horse in the rescue scene. As Fornari correctly notes, Ovid has Perseus fly down on winged sandals, but even though the winged horse Pegasus is associated with Perseus'

1 La Spositione sopra I'Orlando Furioso di M. Ludovico Ariosto (Florence, 1549-50, p. 233. The imitation is already noted by Sebastiano Fausto da Long- iano whose commentary first accompanies the poem in a 1542 edition. In his Anno- tationi et Avvertimenti... which were appended to editions of the Furioso as early as 1556, Girolamo Ruscelli gives the following example, among many, of Ariosto's imitation of episodes drawn from ancient poetry:" ... come Angelica esposta al monstro liberata da Ruggiero su l'Ippogrifo rappresenta Andromeda esposta al monstro liberata da Perseo su'l cavallo Pegaseo." Note Ruscelli's mistaken as- sumption that Pegasus figures in Ovid's scene.

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exploits (he is born, Ovid tells us, from the blood of slain Medusa) he does not serve as the hero's means of transport or figure in the rescue of Andromeda. According to classical legend Pegasus belonged to Belle- rophon, but at some point in the Middle Ages, as early perhaps as the ninth century, there began a literary and iconographic tradition which mounted Perseus on Bellerophon's winged steed. This mistaken asso- ciation of Perseus and Pegasus becomes quite common in late medieval treatments of Andromeda's rescue. It can be found in such a widely read medieval version of the Metamorphoses as Berchorius' Ovidius morcli- zatus, not to mention the fifteenth-century redactions deriving from it.2 In Christine de Pisan's Epitre d'Othea a Hector, another work well known through the fifteenth century, the story of Andromeda's rescue is retold on its own, and there again both the text and the miniatures which often accompany it in the manuscripts depict Perseus flying down on the winged horse. Pegasus is shown carrying the hero in other illustrations of the rescue scene, from the early ones adorning manuscript texts of Berchorius to the much later woodcut by Bernard Salomon reproduced in the Metamorphose figuree of 1567.3 Ariosto's inclusion of the Hippo- gryph would not have seemed jarring given the well-established if un- warranted presence of Pegasus in medieval accounts and representa- tions of Ovid's scene; what would have jarred any reader familiar with the Perseus-Andromeda episode in the moralized Ovids was every other aspect of Ariosto's imitation. To illustrate how different an Ovid Ario- sto invokes I shall first indicate how the rescue of Andromeda was treated in some of the late medieval renditions of the story.

The bibliographical history of the various medieval texts which trans- mit and allegorize Ovid's tales is very complicated, but it is safe to claim that a seminal, representative treatment of Ovid's poem is the Ovidius moralizatus mentioned above. Composed by Petrus Berchorius (Pierre Bersuire) around 1340-42, it must not be confused with one of its sources, the French versified Ovide moralise written earlier in the four- teenth century. Berchorius' work was repeatedly transcribed in the four- teenth and fifteenth centuries. It was translated into French versions, parts of which were incorporated in the earliest French Metamorphoses

2 See John Steadman, "Perseus upon Pegasus and Ovid Moralized," RES, 9 (1958), 407-10, and "The 'Ecloga Theoduli,' The 'General Estoria' and the Per- seus-Bellerophon Myth," MS, 24 (1962), 384-87. For more comments on the icono- graphical tradition of mounting Perseus on Pegasus see Carla Lord, "Ovidian Themes in Italian Renaissance Art," Diss. Columbia 1968.

3 Examples of such illustrations can be found in the manuscript of Berchorius, Ovidius moralizatus (Bergamo: Biblioteca civica), and that of Christine's Epitre d'Othea, MS. Harley 4431. See also figures 56 and 57 in M. D. Henkel, "Illustrier- te Ausgaben von Ovids Metamorphosen in xv., xvi., and xvii. Jahrhundert," Bi- bliotek Warburg Vortriige 1926-27 (Leipzig, 1930), 58-144.

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to be printed at the end of the fifteenth century and finally published in its original Latin in at least four Parisian editions between 1509 and 1521. Wrongly attributed to Thomas Walleys, these printed versions of Berchorius were also published in Lyons in the early sixteenth cen- tury.4

How is the rescue of Andromeda presented in this text? To begin with, Ovid's verse narrative of over a hundred lines is reduced to a bald prose summary, with Perseus, it will be noted, mounted on a winged horse:

Athlante in montem mutato perseus cum equo suo ascendit aera & cum ab hispania usque ad oppidum quoddam in aethiopia venisset volando vidit in littore maris an- dromedam virginem pulcherrimam unicam cephei regis filiam & haeredem vinculis ferreis ad cautes religatam a quodam monstro protinus deuorandam. Cuius monstri tanta erat magnitudo quod costa eius postea a tauro romam deportata. XC. cubitos longitudinis continebat. Mater enim puellae caliope praetulerat se in pulchritudine deabus: quae indignatae filiam illam a belua illa devorandam condemnauerant prop- ter quod rex & populus defleuerunt eam. Perseus igitur descendens & puellae miser- tus: facto pacto quo sibi in vxorem daretur si eam a bestia liberaret contra horren- dam bestiam pugnauit: eamque occidit & puellam duxit.5

Berchorius' synopsis (or any that follow it) reveals that he wants to con- vey only Ovid's matter, and only so much of the matter as he requires to provide the Christian signification he sees allegorized in the tale. That, of course, is his main purpose: not simply to impose on Ovid's pagan tales an allegorical meaning, but also to reveal how the truths they dis- guise are specifically those of Christian theology. One can almost antici- pate his reading of this episode, a rescue scene, as yet another allegory of man's salvation through Christ. Indeed, the interpretation that follows his plot summary asks us to see that Perseus is Christ. Upon seeing the maiden's plight, he takes pity on her and comes down from heaven to save her. She, in turn, signifies the human soul, heiress of the heavenly kingdom, tied by infernal chains of sin to the shores of this world and doomed to be devoured by the sea monster, namely the devil, all because of mother Eve's transgression when, upon Satan's promptings, she sought to be equal to God. Perseus' descent also prefigures Christ's in- carnation; the pledge to her parents that he will save the girl in exchange for her hand is taken to signify Christ's pact with the patriarchs and pro-

4 The long article by F. Ghisalberti, "L' 'Ovidius Moralizatus' di Pierre Ber- suire," Studj romanzi, 23 (1933), 5-136, remains the most valuable study of the text and its literary history. For other studies see the bibliography compiled by J. En- gels, "Berchoriana I," Vivarium, 2 (1964), 62-124.

5 Metamorphosis Ovidiana Moraliter a Magistro Thoma TWalleys . .. expla- nata (Parisiis: in aedibus Ascensianis, 1509), fol. xliiir. I cite the text without abbreviations as it is reprinted in Petrus Berchorius, Reductoriuin morale, Liber XV, cap. ii-xv, Werkmateriaal 2 (Utrecht: Institute for Late Latin, 1962), p. 87.

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phets that man's soul will be joined to him in marriage if he rescues it from sin. Perseus' sword stands for the holy cross which served to over- come and slay the devil.

With minor variants Berchorius' allegorization became in the fif- teenth and early sixteenth centuries a common reading of Ovid's story. Written in French and appended to a more faithful prose rendition of Ovid's tale, it is found in Colard Mansion's sumptuous version of the Metamorphoses published in Bruges in 1484. This reading of Andro- meda's rescue received still wider circulation when Mansion's text was reprinted in Paris by Antoine Verard in 1493. Now entitled La Bible des poetes de Ovide Metamorphose, the text had been republished four times in Paris by 1531. Even in medieval versions of Ovid's poem which derive nmore from the French versified Ovide moralise than from Berchorius the rescue is still taken to allegorize Christ's salvation of the human soul, while the ensuing marriage of Perseus and Andromeda is interpreted as the union of Christ and the holy church.6 In some in- stances Ovid's allegorizers do not reduce his stories to theological ve- hicles-they reduce them to Christian moral allegory. An example of such treatment can be found in the moralized Ovid most frequently printed in Italy in the time of Ariosto: the Metamorfoseo volgare of Giovanni di Bonsignori. Originally composed in 1370, it was first pub- lished in Venice in 1497 and reprinted at least seven times by 1522. When Bonsignori comes to the end of Ovid's fourth book, he again crudely summarizes the story of Perseus and Andromeda, this time in Italian prose. Less interested in the episode than Berchorius, he initial-

ly comments briefly on how in Perseus "se intende lomo virtuoso: el

qual ha le pene angeliche. Per la belua intendo el dimonio." But later, after the start of Book V, he finds it necessary to recapitulate the res- cue's moral significance: "per Caliope madre de Andromeda: se intende la superbia. per Andromeda che era ligata intendo la mente nobile: la-

qual per la superbia e remossa e tolta dadio; & ene data ad iurare al

6 See Ovid Moralise. Poene du comrmencenent du quatorsie'me siMcle, ed. Cor- nelius de Boer (Amsterdam, 1920) II, 154, and Ovide Moralise en Prose (Texte du Quinzieme Siecle), ed. C. de Boer (Amsterdam, 1954), p. 168. As I mentioned earlier, the story of Andromeda's rescue is retold at the end of the fourteenth cen- tury in Christine de Pisan's Epitre d'Othea a Hector but she offers a somewhat different allegorization of it. The story is the fifth of one hundred episodes or mo- ments Christine chooses from the stock of classical myth to reveal, by allegorical interpretation, the Christian and moral doctrine which must govern the conduct of a would-be "chevalier." In Christine's allegorization, Pegasus is seen as the spiritu- al knight's good angel who will bear good report of him on the day of judgment while Andromeda represents his own soul which the knight must free from the fiend by vanquishing sin. Some valuable comments on Christine's treatment of this scene as well as reproductions of the miniatures which illustrated it can be found in Rosemond Tuve, Allegorical Imagery (Princeton, 1966), pp. 34-36; see also pp. 36-45, 285-311.

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dimonio: per Perseo intendo la vertu: la quale toglie la mente nobile e divina per sua moglie e sogliela da le mane diabolice con le belle parole."7 Note that both spiritual and moral allegories stress the redemptive doc- trine which the tale is assumed to signify. Appended to varying prose versions of the original story, these interpretations become part of the tale and compel the reader to consider the rescue only in terms of the Christian truth it is taken to figure. Ovid's account is usually altered by omitting any aspect which cannot be made to fit the predetermined sig- nificance. When the stories cannot be so conveniently reduced, the alle- gorical meanings imposed on them, ingenious though they are, border on the absurd. Regardless of the success or failure of the allegories, how- ever, Ovid's poem suffers lamentable losses in the process. Solely concerned with the matter of his poem which could be made symbolically relevant to Christian doctrine, the allegorizers neglected to consider the most essential aspect of Ovid's art: his manner of presenting the stories, his narrative style.

The medieval habit of imposing Christian allegory on Ovid's stories was so ingrained that it continued to be practiced well into the sixteenth century.8 And the solemn meanings that had become attached to Per- seus' rescue of Andromeda continued to be associated with the story when the imitation of it in the Furioso first appeared. Ariosto's imitation must be seen in the light both of the Latin original and of its medieval versions because in the course of recapturing Ovid's original manner the Italian poet also aims to defy the postclassical transformations of Ovid's poetry. His imitation, that is to say, embodies a manifesto about proper ways of reading and using the Metamorphoses. Its implicit re- jection of the kinds of reading I have just been illustrating is initially revealed by a deliberate effort to divest his episode and, by association Ovid's, of any allegorical significance.

There is no way of totally preventing a fiction from being read alle- gorically. The interpretations of the Metamorphoses examined above reveal how helpless a text can be at the hands of ingenious exegetes. A determined author, however, can discourage or render absurd attempts to allegorize his narrative. Ariosto does so. The fact that there is nothing

7 Ovidio mnetamorphoseos vulgare (Venice: Lucantonio Giunta, 1501), fol. xxxviiv. I cite from the copy owned by the Metropolitan Museum in New York.

8 Of course, Ovid's original Metamorphoses became increasingly available with the advent of printing and the philological efforts of Italian humanists to restore and annotate the texts of antiquity. The most frequently printed edition of Ovid's Latin poem in the sixteenth century is the Metamorphoses annotated by Raphael Regius and first published in Venice in 1492. But this "proper" text does not dis- place the allegorized versions. How it coexists with them at least until the 1530s is clearly shown in Madeleine Doran's article, "Some Renaissance Ovids," in Lit- erature and Society, ed. Bernice Slote (Lincoln, Neb., 1964), pp. 44-61.

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self-contained or unannounced about Angelica's presence and situation inhibits, from the start, the impulse to allegorize. However fantastic her predicament, we know exactly from the developments narrated in Canto VIII what has led her to such a sorry state. And notwithstanding his extraordinary means of transport, which allows two separate strands of plot to meet, Ruggiero is a very human individual already encountered in a variety of situations distinctly different from the present one.9 By clearly delineating the causes of the event, by rationalizing it, and by focusing on its human possibilities the author successfully deemphasizes the improbable and incredible aspects of the story which, had they re- mained too overt, would readily have encouraged allegorical reading. The effect of these narrative strategies is to make the reader entertain the literal possibility of the fantastic situation, not its improbability. It is remarkable, moreover, that virtually every feature of the episode is linked in some way to Ariosto's enormous plot: the magic ring, for ex- ample, which Ruggiero passes over to Angelica has already changed hands several times earlier in the story; the Hippogryph has been and will be ridden by others than Ruggiero; above all, the setting itself with its devouring monster will figure again in the very next canto when Olimpia, another "abbandonata," must be rescued by Orlando from the same fate. We cannot easily assign to anyone or anything in the episode a single symbolic meaning, for the allegorical sense imposed can obvi- ously be challenged by the different, even contradictory, signification that the same character or same object possesses at some other moment in the poem.10

Ariosto's dramatically shifting, contradictory characters render at-

tempts at allegory particularly futile. His characters simply lack the fixity any allegory requires. Angelica's mutability, for instance, is al-

ready notorious enough by the time we encounter her in chains to dis-

courage any tendency to see her as representing the human soul or, for

9 Ariosto reasserts Ruggiero's human traits just before the rescue scene when he reminds us that in the course of the fabulous journey Ruggiero takes on the winged horse he manages, like all good tourists, to settle down in comfortable lodgings every night:

"Non crediate, Signor, che pero stia per si lungo camin sempre su l'ale: ogni sera all'albergo se ne gia, schivando a suo poter d'alloggiar male."

(X.73) 10 It might be argued that the magic ring is one object that seems to possess

consistent allegorical meaning at different moments in the poem. But if it is taken as the "ring of reason" one might well ask why it bestows so little of that virtue on Angelica when she regains possession of it. I would maintain that in this epi- sode Ariosto employs the ring less as a symbolic device than as a narrative one serving to strengthen the connection between the rescue scene and preceding events in the poem.

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that matter, anything other than a perpetually changing individual. This

instability of character so typical of Ariosto's protagonists is depicted, in the case of Ruggiero, within the episode itself. Indeed, if the context of Ariosto's plot works against allegorizing Angelica's rescue, such an im-

pulse is restrained even more by the immediate context of the event. In its narrative details, Ariosto's depiction of the rescue is similar enough to Ovid's that the scenario may still be mistaken, by a reader so habitu- ated, for an allegory of man's salvation by Christ or of virtue triumph- ing over evil. But already such departures from Ovid's account as the omission of any marriage vows, the absence of any maternal transgres- sion to explain Angelica's dire punishment, and the fact that the mon- ster is not killed but only stunned, defy the ingenious equations with Christian doctrine devised by Ovid's allegorizers. What ultimately in- hibits any remaining allegorical impulse, however, is the immediate out- come of the rescue. I refer, of course, to Ruggiero's ludicrous attempt to rape Angelica once the naked girl is in his hands. Both episode and can- to, it will be recalled, end with Ruggiero's frenetic effort to rid himself of his armor as he tries to ravish Angelica. This comic resolution of the rescue best exemplifies how the radical shift of behavior in the poem's protagonists serves the author's antiallegorical stratagems. Obviously, no solemn Christian meanings still invested in the damsel's valiant sa- vior can survive the transformation of his character we are made to witness. The persistent reader who may still seek in the tale a figurative account of the soul's resurrection finds himself confronted, at the end of it, with nothing but the resurrected flesh, a more dire likelihood in the world depicted in the Orlando Futrioso.

Although Ruggiero's attempt at rape may seem a marked departure from Ovid's account, its appropriateness becomes clearer when one con- siders the features of the Latin original Ariosto considers it so impor- tant to capture. Up to this point, I have been examining the postclassical uses of Ovid which Ariosto implicitly seeks to banish. But what aspects of Ovid's poetry does he seek to restore? It is, unsurprisingly, the style and artistry of the poet neglected by his allegorizers and so indispensable a part of his literary contribution. Above all, Ariosto reinstates one of the most characteristic aspects of Ovid's narrative art: its mixture of style and tone, particularly the wit and playfulness which infuse and so often undermine the momentous events described.11

It would be impossible to gather from the summaries of the Perseus-

11 For some of my ensuing remarks on Ovid's poetry I am indebted to my col- league Professor Robert Hanning. I have also benefited from two recent essays by Charles Segal on Ovid's playful treatment of myth: "Ovid's Metamorphoses: Greek Myth in Augustan Rome," SP, 68 (1971), 371-94; and "Narrative Art in the Metamorphoses," CJ, 66 (1971), 331-37.

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Andromeda episode handed down by the allegorizers that Ovid pre- sented it in a less than serious manner. Yet the original narrative imme- diately discloses the poet's playful intent. Consider how he describes Perseus' initial reaction upon seeing the chained girl, and the exchange that follows it. By delicately observing her windblown hair, the tears streaming down her cheeks (IV.673-75), Ovid reminds us as well as Perseus that Andromeda is not a statue but a beautiful living creature. It is the first clue to his concern for the human and erotic rather than the epic possibilities of the incident. So heart-struck is our hero by Andromeda's loveliness that for a moment he forgets to beat his wings (IV.677)-a comic detail that would be more appropriate in a cartoon strip than in a heroic tale. And the chains that bind the girl to her awful fate, chains that for the allegorizers symbolized the soul's dire bond to sin, merely offer Perseus an occasion to flirt with the conceit that love's chains are the only burden she should have to bear (IV.678-79). She, in turn, a well-bred girl, hesitates to address a stranger and would cover her face if her hands were not tied to the rock-a touch made all the more amusing by the fact that the girl is stark naked. Ariosto will, of course, appropriate virtually all these details in his account of Ruggie- ro's initial encounter with Angelica:

Creduto avria che fosse statua finta o d'alabastro o d'altri marmi illustri Ruggiero, e su lo scoglio cosi avinta per artificio di scultori industri; se non vedea la lacrima distinta tra fresche rose e candidi ligustri far rugiadose le crudette pome, e l'aura sventolar l'aurate chiome . . .

e dolcemente alia donzella disse, poi che del suo destrier freno le penne: -O donna, degna sol de la catena con chi i suoi servi Amor legati mena,

e ben di questo e d'ogni male indegna, chi e quel crudel che con voler perverso d'importuno livor stringendo segna di queste belle man l'avorio terso ?_12

(X.96-98)

And when, as he continues to imitate Ovid, Ariosto describes the naked Angelica's bashfulness about being so exposed to an unknown man (98- 99), the girl's futile attempt to cover herself becomes all the funnier

12 Lodovico Ariosto, Orlando Furioso, a cura di Remo Ceserani (Turin, 1962), I, 346-47.

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given what we know of the sexual calamities she has already experienced earlier in the poem.

Ovid achieves his playful effects in various ways. One typical ploy, obviously cherished and imitated by Ariosto, is to violate decorum by emphasizing the normal, banal, and often erotic impulses of characters engaged in solemn and larger-than-life exploits. Irreverence as well as wit ensues from this humorous collocation of the all-too-human and the superhuman since the grandeur of the heroic or mythical event is inevit- ably undermined in the process. Thus, in both the rescue scenes I am examining, the hero's flirtatious but everyday banter with the exposed heroine, which is incongruously placed in the midst of the most fantastic situation, makes it impossible to take the ominous threat of the monster or the fierce struggle that follows as seriously as the story may originally have asked. And even when the heroic battle is under way, epic similes notwithstanding, Ovid will once more ensure that we remain skeptically detached by his sudden concern with a logistic difficulty besetting the hero-Perseus' inability to stay airborne because his winged feet have gotten so drenched by the monster's spray (IV.730)--a small but ra- tional consideration which suffices to make us smile as it prevents us from getting too absorbed in the struggle. Ariosto, who rarely misses any of Ovid's subversive tactics, will develop the problem of waterlogged wings to more comic proportions when he describes Ruggiero's encoun- ter with the beast:

Si forte ella nel mar batte la coda, che fa vicino al ciel l'acqua inalzare; tal che non sa se l'ale in aria snoda, o pur se '1 suo destrier nuota nel mare. Gli e spesso che disia trovarsi a proda; che se lo sprazzo in tal modo ha a durare, teme sl l'ale inaffi all'ippogriffo, che brami invano avere o zucca o schifo.

(X.106)

By shifting from the hyperbolic description of the monster splashing heaven to Ruggiero's very pressing concern about a drenching his winged steed cannot withstand, Ariosto succeeds in bringing out the potential ridiculousness of the fierce encounter-if only for a moment. Such rapid shifts of perspective, of tone, the ability to entertain incom- patible views simultaneously, have often been recognized as basic fea- tures of Ariosto's disconcerting narrative manner. Yet when we see, in the episode at hand, how many instances of this habitual mode are in- spired by Ovid's example, we can recognize how indebted Ariosto's style is to the Latin poet's. The basic kinship between their styles is affirmed all the more when we note that despite Ariosto's obvious imitation of

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Ovid, he has not had to alter his usual voice or manner, firmly estab- lished now after ten cantos.

These remarks bring me back to Ariosto's surprising resolution of Angelica's liberation. In one sense there is nothing in Ovid's account which warrants the hero's attempt to ravish the girl he saves, as it occurs in the Italian poem. But in another sense this unexpected and jarring outcome of the rescue operation can be seen as an amplification of Ovid's smaller but similarly incongruous effects. Have we not just observed how Ovid achieves these effects by dwelling on all-too-human or erotic reflexes of his heroic or mythical characters ? What else is Ariosto doing when he transforms Ruggiero from a savior to a ravisher but enlarging on Ovid's technique? We have been partly prepared for a romantic out- come of Ruggiero's rescue by the hero's initial amorous conduct. But that the desire prompted by Angelica should erupt in an attempted rape is quite unexpected, farcical, and yet disturbingly possible. The disturb- ance attests that when the poet exploits here as elsewhere the ludicrous possibilities of pathetic or epic situations-and this is genuinely Ovidian -he seeks to prompt more than laughter. I do not want to burden Ario- sto's or Ovid's wry humor unduly but in both authors the mixture of style, genre, and therefore of tones is surely consistent with their vision of an unstable, indeed a chaotic world, totally unpredictable except for its constant changes. In both poets, these mixtures aim to challenge single literary representations of reality as well as the reassuring vision of order and permanence often assumed in such constructs. Not that Ovid and Ariosto are finally dismayed by the mutability they perceive and represent. On the contrary, instability inspires both poets; it allows them, paradoxically, to assert the shaping and controlling power of their art. Nevertheless, their fluctuating styles which serve to depict the flux of the world question the validity of fixed symbolic images of reality.

When I began considering Ariosto's defiance of Ovid's moralizers I

pointed to the antiallegorical devices he uses to discourage a symbolic reading of his Ovidian episode. I did not, however, discuss a most effec- tive way of frustrating the allegorical temper: namely, emphasizing and

amplifying the subversive manner Ovid himself employs in presenting the story. For Ariosto correctly perceived that the very mode in which Ovid reshaped his mythical matter was meant to divest it of deep seri- ousness and symbolic force. To reduce the Metamorphoses, as the medie- val allegorizers did, to its matter, resulted in a total neglect of Ovid's playful and imaginative treatment of its mythical stories. And if the stories, reduced as they were, could barely support the Christian inter- pretations imposed on them, allegorization would have been much more senseless had Ovid's urbanity and irreverent skepticism been taken into

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account. It is precisely the skepticism coloring Ovid's playful treatment of serious myths which Ariosto found so compatible and so necessary to reassert. By relying on the Latin poet's very tactics to dispel allegorical readings of Angelica's liberation Ariosto is saying, in effect, that the Metamorphoses, when read in their proper spirit, challenge the sacra- mental views of the universe which prompt allegorical interpretation to begin with. The act of restoring Ovid's manner serves as a humorous way of exposing the distortion his poetry had suffered until the Furioso could help rescue it.

I do not want to end without emphasizing that Ariosto's imitation seeks above all to reproduce the comic effects of Ovid's cultivated wit. If his exaggeration of this wit also succeeds in frustrating allegorical impulses, primarily it aims to make us laugh. Of course Ariosto wants us to recognize that his mockery of the medieval allegorizers contributes an added dimension to the fun. I have dwelled on his defiance of the alle- gorizers to show how much the comedy at the end of Canto X is achieved at their expense. In fact this subtle mockery allows Ariosto to outdo Ovid even as he restores his style, for he can intensify Ovid's witty treat- ment of serious myth by playing against the intervening Christian alle- gorical tradition which was obviously not available to the Roman poet. His humorous repudiation of this tradition ultimately provides the added comic dimension by which the imitation surpasses its classical model.

Columbia University

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