Orlando furioso, guarito
De l’Arioste à Shakespeare
L'hypothèse de ce petit livre est de remarquer que Shakespeare a lu l'Arioste, y a réfléchi, lui empruntant ce nom, Orlando, pour le rêveur qu'il va, dans As you like it, mettre en scène. Mais ce qu'il veut, lui, c'est comprendre comment les déconstructions peuvent s'accomplir. Et voyant bien que tout se joue dans l'emploi des mots, il invente une jeune fille qui, obligée pour sauver sa vie de se déguiser en garçon, s'avise qu'elle peut profiter de cette vêture, qui empêche Orlando de la reconnaître, pour «guérir» ce rêveur, qu'elle aime, en transgressant dans ses conversations avec lui les façons figées, radicalement réductrices, dans lesquelles l'idéologie de la société enferme les femmes.
- Essais
- Paru le 24/01/2013
- Genre : Littérature française
- 152 pages - 150 x 215 mm
- EAN : 9782715233737
- ISBN : 9782715233737
Foreign Rights
Orlando furioso, guarito
Rights sold
Italy - Sellerio
Presentation
"In Orlando Furioso — the Frenzy of Orlando — Ariosto shows how tragedy can strike a human with the gift of speech when language submits to a conceptual use of words. When the gap between a person and his unreal image is suddenly revealed in a fraction of an instant, an entire set of values and morals can be destroyed: this is the madness, the « fury » that grips Orlando when the real nature of Angelica, his love, is revealed. Ariosto understood this without drawing the right conclusions: the Soul is there to deconstruct ideality; and women are the first victims of this transfiguration of objects, desire or feelings.
The hypothesis put forward in this short book is that Shakespeare was a reader of Arioste and borrowed from him this name of Orlando, to give it to the dreamer of As you like it. Shakespeare however, sought to understand how these necessary deconstructions came about. He invented a young girl obliged to dress up as a boy in order to save her life and who realizes that she can take advantage of her disguise, in which Orlando will not recognize her, to « cure » this dreamer, whom she loves, by transgressing in her conversations with him the rigid, limiting ways in which their society’s ideology imprisoned women. Worth more that the concepts they are reduced to, their ambiguities, underlying meanings are fatal to idealistic constructions.
I have not attempted, despite this, a study of As you like it, a complex play in which Shakespeare, who is essentially intuitive, seeks rather than asserts, arriving at very new perspectives, on the self-knowledge gained by Rosalind for example, who refuses to do and say what society wants. My objective is to get people to read the play, that is, in Shakespeare’s own way, on the brink of the great tragedies of the time. I also ask that one reflects on this issue of idealisation, that stops poems being so completely poem." Y.B.
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