| Summary: | <p>This thesis is conceived as a monograph on the vernacular lyric poetry by Ludovico Ariosto (1474-1533). It aims to show that, although the <em>rime</em> belong to the ‘minor works’ of the author of the <em>Orlando furioso</em>, they nevertheless testify to Ariosto’s search for a personal poetics also in the lyric genre.</p>
<p>The thesis is divided into four chapters (with an introduction and a conclusion), each of which focuses on a different leitmotif in the lyrics. Chapter I centres on the self-fashioning of the lyric ‘I’ in some poems adopting the terza rima and dealing with a typically elegiac theme: the speaker’s sorrow at being parted from his beloved. Chapter II looks at the way Ariosto fashions the love relationship; in particular, I highlight (once again) his debts towards the Latin elegy, and the way these debts are intertwined with motifs belonging to the tradition of Petrarchism. Chapter III is concerned with Ariosto’s treatment of the <em>descriptio puellae</em>; it examines Ariosto’s tendency to feature details clearly drawn from life (eschewing the mere repetition of <em>topoi</em>) and to praise his beloved’s intellectual qualities, not merely her beauty. In the fourth and last chapter, I investigate the treatment of political themes, showing how they coincide with a set of references to members of the Medici family, Ariosto’s opinion of whom I try to reappraise.</p>
<p>The purpose of the thesis is to understand the relationship (both stylistic and thematic) between the <em>rime</em> and the context of lyric vernacular poetry of Ariosto’s time: I show how they are poised between fifteenth-century courtly Petrarchism and a more modern fashion, and furthermore bear the marks of a strong classical inspiration. I provide, where relevant, some comparisons with the <em>Furioso</em> and the <em>Satire</em>, in order to investigate how the same themes are treated by Ariosto in different poetic genres.</p>
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