Orlando Furioso is a masterpiece, a great book, a seminal work of very high order. And most important, it is not one of those classics more admired than actually read. When it was first published in 1516, it reached, almost immediately, a vast audience and became astonishingly popular throughout Europe. The book appeared in nearly a dozen translations within its first fifty years. Spenser imitated it; Goethe admired it; Cervantes praised it and quoted from it in his own masterpiece of chivalric romance,Don Quixote; even Voltaire admitted himself fascinated by Ariosto. Scott learned Italian in order to read it in the original, while Byron learned much from Ariosto.Orlando Furioso attained such popularity because it is lively and exciting and fun to read. Now this new prose translation can delight and thrill readers of the twentieth century as readers of earlier eras were once delighted.