LIT 231
Prof. G. Steinberg

Response Paper:  Orlando Furioso, Cantos 43-46

Choose one of the following areas as the focus of your response paper:

1. What are the final lessons that the young leaders in Orlando Furioso must learn?  How do the stories about Rinaldo and Ruggiero in the final cantos add to what we’ve learned before about the proper behavior of leaders?  What is the proper behavior for a nobleman in Ariosto’s eyes?  What does Rinaldo learn from the knight with the enchanted cup and from the boatman’s tale of Argia?  What role does Leo play in the final education of Ruggiero?  What role does Rodomont play?  Why does the poem end the way that it does?
2. Why isn’t Bradamant another Olympia?  Or is she in fact one?  What is the proper behavior for a noblewoman in Ariosto’s eyes?  What is the proper behavior for noble parents?

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