Abstract

Much has been said about the ungrateful, unfaithful, voluble woman within Orlando furioso: there are several female figures in the poem who exhibit these characteristics and who contribute to making the poet’s praise of the “weakerµ sex highly ambiguous. To this typology belongs Angelica, who, however, does not represent that female wickedness perfectly embodied, in the poem, by Gabrina, to whom Matteo Residori has written some very interesting pages (Tra efficacia del male e inerzia della virtù: la Gabrina di Ariosto). It is precisely the “pleasureµ of villainy that characterizes the woman that allows us to reflect on the Ariosto character and, at the same time, to analyze the function of absolute negativity within a poem where the opposition between good and evil is never so clear. The terrible old woman appears at the center of the poem (Marfisa meets her in XX): just before, the writer has told us the story of the beautiful and wicked Orrigille, loved by Grifone who, for her, abandons the companions of so many adventures. This is another example of a dupe and disloyal woman that it is important to examine, because not only does it come from Boiardo’s poem, but it is also placed in a strategic position, close to the events of Zerbino and Isabella, who instead constitute a model of fidelity and moral rectitude.