BOIARDO, MATTEO MARIA
(1441-1494)
Italian humanist and poet, best known for his romance epic Orlando innamorato / Roland in Love. Boiardo was brought up at Ferrara and at a castle belonging to his grandfather. He lived at the court of Ferrara, where he was a close associate of Duke Ercole I and served the prince as a military commander and regional governor. His early poetry was in Latin, but he also wrote vernacular pastoral eclogues and a book of love poetry modelled on Petrarch. His famous epic merges two traditional romance themes, the Carolingian and the Arthurian, in an account of the love of the hero Orlando for a Saracen princess. It draws on Greek, Latin, French, and Italian material from several genres. It had great influence on epic poetry in the following generations and inspired many sequels; the Orlando furioso by Ariosto is the most famous of the latter.