Agency and Agnosis in the Orlando furioso

Abstract This article foregrounds human epistemological disorientation in the Orlando furioso with a view to theological implications which, if not rigorously followed up by Ariosto’s verse (too supple to endure rigor), are nevertheless made possible by its discourse. Beginning with the recurring fantasy-inducing impotence of will (madness) that unite the narrator with the characters, the article examines the Furioso’s own transition from romance to epic mode, aiming to highlight the survival of romance and its subversion of the epistemological exhaustiveness of the epic. By turning to the theological implications of the human epistemological condition that the Orlando furioso repeatedly evokes, it suggests how a functional agnosticism could begin to operate beneath the surface of theic humanist fictions and thought.