Biography

Nicole Volta is a scholar of Italian Renaissance Literature. She graduated from University of Turin (2017), before obtaining her PhD at Sapienza University of Rome (2021), with a dissertation on Ludovico Ariosto’s Rime. Her doctoral dissertation led to the publication of a book titled: Ludovico Ariosto, Rime secondo il ms. Rossiano 639 (2024). She has since worked as a postdoctoral fellow at Istituto Italiano per gli Studi Storici (Naples), Sapienza University of Rome and University for Foreigners of Perugia. Her main research interests concern Ariosto’s poetry, Renaissance lyric poetry, both in vernacular and in Latin, Latin works by Petrarch (De ignorantia) and Petrarch Exegesis.

Project Summary

This project aims to address a significant gap in the scholarship on Ludovico Ariosto by situating his early literary activity within the courtly contexts in which it took shape. The study will focus on the works composed and revised by Ariosto during the period in which he was writing the first edition of Orlando Furioso, and in the years immediately following its publication in 1516. These include his Latin poems, the early comedies, the Obizzeide, an eclogue, and a selection of lyric poetry. Long dismissed as “minor” or fragmentary, this body of work calls for a comprehensive reassessment—one that brings to light its connections to the cultural, political, and social dynamics of Ariosto’s time.