ABSTRACT
This chapter explains what kind of textual work the figures of Ulysses and Penelope perform in a chivalric poem of the early sixteenth century like Ludovico Ariosto’s Orlando furioso. In Ariosto’s Furioso, published for the first time in 1516, Ulysses is not a pervasive presence. His figure appears generally as a term of comparison for heroes, and one could just read it as the precious reference to the classical myth. While not immune from violence or oppression, this alternative space of prophetic poetry allows the poet to carve out for himself a space of non-belonging to the economy of praise and courtly favor he so sharply stigmatizes. An interesting meta-textual remark provides the frame of reference for new design. It is, for Ariosto, impossible to engage in a discourse on truth within context of praise of the male patrons, which is contaminated by the powerful falsifications of poetry.
