ABSTRACT
The issue of modernity both in the case of Ariosto and of today’s theories of poetics seems an outdated question. The inner contradictions of postmodernism, which Perniola points out, and description of its program, can help to evaluate further the question of Ariosto’s modernity or postmodernity, as well as understand what is at stake in the conflict of these poetics. The novelty of the episode of Ruggiero and Alcina consists in the collapse of two key episodes of the Commedia, that of the “femmina balba” and that of Gerione. The Alcina episode, brief as it is, suffices to make clear, in view, Ariosto’s poetic method which can be summed up as the collapse of the human and supernatural world to the same ironic level. In Ariosto, the difference between man and myth disappears as there is no substantial difference between the two. There is no longer a difference between the world of magic and the world of man.
