Walter Scott and Ariosto's Orlando Furioso.

Walter Scott proclaimed Ariosto his favourite Romance poet and Orlando Furioso his preferred epic. Byron subsequently called him the "Ariosto of the North" (and Ariosto "the southern Scott"). For Scott, the power of words to ?make a ladye seem a knight? or transform a sheiling into a palace associates Scottish folk culture with necromantic tales from medieval France and Italy. In the Minstrelsy ballad ?Thomas the Rhymer? an elf queen takes a poet on a magical journey into subterranean Scotland. Waverley?s ?fair enchantress? Flora MacIvor weaves an aesthetic out of the land and the mystique of romantic love. Scott?s interest in Ariosto extended beyond his writing career. Reading Orlando became a self-prescribed palliative for the ?mental and bodily fever,? that he suffered when too long in town. The prospect of an ?Orlando cure? for frenzy is intriguing. This paper explores how Scott brought early sixteenth-century Italy to Scotland in new ways. That bond strengthened when his works were translated and adapted into Italian art and culture.