Editing Matteo Maria Boiardo (section)

== Legacy ==
Boiardo's ''Orlando Innamorato'' enjoyed great popularity amongst his contemporaries, its unfinished state prompting a number of sequels by, amongst others, Nicolò degli Agostini, Raffaele Valcieco, and above all [[Ludovico Ariosto]] in his ''[[Orlando Furioso]]''. But [[Pietro Bembo]]'s reformation of the language in 1525, the rediscovery of [[Aristotle]]'s ''[[Poetics]]'' in the 1530s, and the incipient [[Counter-Reformation]] in the 1540s all caused it to fall from favour amongst critics and writers, including [[Torquato Tasso]], who found it lacking on linguistic, theoretical, and moral grounds. Gradually, Boiardo's original version was supplanted by [[Francesco Berni]]'s ''rifacimento'' (1542), a recasting of the poem in literary Tuscan, and by [[Lodovico Domenichi]]'s contemporary revision, the publication of which (1544), significantly, coincided with the last edition of Boiardo to appear in the Renaissance in the original text.

Following centuries of neglect, the rediscovery of Boiardo took place in [[England]] during the [[Romanticism|Romantic period]]. Starting in 1830 [[Anthony Panizzi]], the expatriate Italian professor later to become librarian of the [[British Museum]], produced a historic combined edition of Boiardo's ''Orlando'' ''Innamorato'' and Ariosto's ''Orlando'' ''Furioso''. This marked both the restoration of the ''Innamorato''<nowiki/>'s original text and the beginning of modern Boiardo criticism.

Described by the critic [[Carlo Dionisotti]] as the most misunderstood poet in Italian literature, and for a long time overshadowed by Ariosto, Boiardo has since emerged as one of the most forceful poets of the Renaissance, his work recognized as the first vernacular masterpiece by a Northern Italian author. As a result of this critical acclaim he now seems set to rival Ariosto's long-standing supremacy.