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| | mondo marion: Alcina program essay |
 | | Broadly speaking, its two main narrative threads concern the love-inspired madness of Orlando, Charlemagne's greatest warrior; and the courtship and marriage of two of Alcina's protagonists: Bradamante and Ruggiero, the mythical forbears of the Este dynasty, Ariosto's patrons at court of Ferrara. |
 | | Orlando furioso's vast canvas ranges from the icy, wind-whipped shores of northern Europe to the scorched deserts of Ethiopia, and from the maws of hell to the daffy landscape of the moon. |
 | | Among the keenest readers of Orlando furioso are Jorge Luis Borges and Italo Calvino, whose final meditations—on such themes as "lightness," "quickness," "exactitude," "visibility," and "multiplicity"—might serve as a summa of the poem's most striking qualities. |
| www.mondo-marion.com /alcina.html (1157 words) |
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