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

AN INTERNATIONAL SYMPOSIUM

November 11 & 12, 2016

Organized by: Professor Antonio Ricci, York University

Hosted by: The Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies, Victoria University 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.

Visit crrs.ca/furioso for program

The Toronto Consort’s production of The Italian Queen of France includes musical compositions inspired by theOrlando Furioso. Symposium attendees receive a 10% discount for the November 11 and 12 performances with their registration confirmation email.