uous discipline to their readers was primitive to their acceptance as “vernacular Virgils,” those who imitated his way of writing (Watkins 52). In his “Letter to Raleigh,” Spenser mentions the influence of Lodovico Ariosto’s work, Orlando furioso (1516), in The Faerie Queene: “In which I have followed al the antique Poets historicall, first Homere, who in the Persons of Agamemnon and Ulysses hath ensampled a good governour and virtuous man…after him Ariosto comprised them both in his Orlando…” Ariosto’s epic is generally regarded as the finest expression of the literary tendencies and spiritual attitudes of the Italian Renaissance. Orlando furioso is an original continuation of Boiardo’s Orland inamorato. Ariosto was determined to finish Boiardo’s work, who died before completing the Inamorato. It derived from the epic, romances, and heroic poetry of the Middle Ages and Early Renaissance. The influence of the Furioso is apparent in The Faerie Queene, in which Spenser had openly admitted wanting to “overgo.” “Ariosto redirected the course of chivalric poetry, effecting a wedding of classical epic and medieval romance” (Marinelli 56). Thus, this epic provided Spenser with his closest model for The Faerie Queene. Spenser arranged his epic into twelve books, just as Ariosto did. The books celebrated different virtues through the actions of several heroes. They serve to join the characters’ adventures with the virtues they strive for (Redcrosse strives to reach the virtue of Holiness). Early passages develop symbols of virtues in their abstract or common meaning (Marinelli 57). It is only after the characters attempt to attain a particular virtue that they ultimately embody the virtue. This element of intervening adventures appear like Ariosto’s at first, but are, in fact, more related to a medieval element—they have ...
