Spatial References

Image credit: Ludovico Ariosto, Orlando furioso (Venice: Valgrisi, 1562), p. 357. Courtesy of the George  J. Mitchell Department of Special Collections & Archives, Bowdoin College Library.

Spatial Fictions

Initially, we were interested in modeling the spatial dimensions of the poem. The Furioso is a poem characterized by many different geographic settings. Ariosto takes the reader on a winding journey from Europe, to Africa, to Asia, and even to the moon. The varied geographic settings of the poem add to its chaotic narrative structure. Professor Leisawitz, the director of Italian studies at Muhlenberg College, spent 6 years developing the Orlando Furioso Atlas, which is an “interactive digital mapping project, which aims to translate and represent in cartographic terms the sprawling world of [...] Ludovico Ariosto's Orlando Furioso.” (Leisawitz, 2016.) The OF Atlas uses a map from 1507 as a background for plotting the movement of characters throughout the poem. Additionally, the OF Atlas includes the corresponding text for each location mentioned, allowing readers to understand when and how Ariosto referred to the locations throughout the poem. The OF Atlas is a fantastic resource for those interested in further understanding the spatial context of the poem.

However, modeling the spaces in the poem using quantitative digital tools at the scale of the poem proved to be difficult. The central hurdle to spatial analysis is that Ariosto uses outdated names for cities, regions, and countries. Modern mapping software requires the ability to geocode - turning location names into longitude and latitude points that can be plotted on a map. The antiquated naming conventions used in the Furioso made geocoding essentially impossible because modern software does not recognize the outdated location names. A second difficulty was that some of the places in the poem are entirely fictional. For example, Ebuda - where Angelica is chained to the rock and almost sacrificed to an orc - is entirely fictional, even though Ariosto attempts to situate it north of France. Ariosto also changes where Ebuda is located in the poem, further adding to the difficulty of plotting its location.  

For these reasons we largely abandoned the spatial analysis of the poem from a data-driven perspective. 

Counting Names

Nonetheless, we thought it would be useful to plot the most common locations mentioned throughout the poem using the Reynolds Index data. Below is a figure representing the most common locations for every one that was mentioned in 10 or more octaves.