However, in the castle, are only knights-errant, including Ruggiero and Bradamant: It is again Atlas’s magic castle.Īngelica enters the castle, but is immune to its magic she ends up freeing all of the trapped knights. At one point, Orlando thinks he sees Angelica abducted into a castle. Along the way, he meets Irish warriors who vow to join the French cause. Ruggiero plans to have sex with Angelica, but she uses her magic ring to escape.Īfter several rescue quests and monster-killing missions, Orlando decides to search for Angelica in Ireland. Ruggiero cannot kill the orc, so he and Angelica flee to Brittany. Orlando looks for her in vain all over France.Īs Alcina’s army is defeated, Ruggiero flies off on the hippogryph, eventually landing on the island where Angelica is naked and tied to be sacrificed. In Paris, Orlando leaves his post in the middle of the night to chase after Angelica. A scavenger kidnaps her from the magician to sacrifice her to an orc-a sea monster. Rinaldo sails onward to England, where the prince of England also agrees to join them.Ī magician knocks Angelica out, but he is impotent and unable to rape her. Rinaldo meets the Scottish king, who agrees to join the war against King Agramant. Luckily, Melissa uses her magic to free Ruggiero and breaks the spells on all Alcina’s other victims, including Astolfo. Ruggiero fights Alcina, but she seduces him with magic. Ruggiero flies the hippogryph to the island where the evil sorceress Alcina has imprisoned the enchanted Astolfo, cousin of Rinaldo and Orlando. Rinaldo lands in Scotland, where he rescues several maidens and kills their kidnapper Polynex. But before Bradamant can get to Ruggiero, he is abducted by Atlas’s hippogryph.Ĭharlemagne sends Rinaldo to England. After Bradamant defeats Atlas, Atlas releases his prisoners. The sorceress Melissa tells Bradamant how to get a magic ring to defeat Atlas. Bradamant finds a secret altar where the ghost of Merlin foretells that she will marry Ruggiero. Rinaldo’s sister, the female Christian knight Bradamant, seeks her love, the Moorish warrior Ruggiero, who is imprisoned in the magic castle of the wizard Atlas. Angelica escapes Orlando and Rinaldo, getting captured and rescued by a series of knights. His rival for her affections is Rinaldo, another Christian paladin. While Agramant besieges Charlemagne in Paris, Orlando falls in love with the pagan princess Angelica. Its main story follows the knight Orlando, one of the paladins of Charlemagne, goes mad as a result of love however, there are also many other interwoven stories, and countless asides by the narrator. The poem takes place during a war between the Christian Emperor Charlemagne of France and the Moorish King Agramant.

This guide cites the prose translation by Guido Waldman, published by Oxford World’s Classics in 2008.

Orlando furioso by Ludovico Ariosto