Matteo Maria Boiardo (1434–1494)

I read a prose translation, I should have tried to find poetry version. Unfinished epic poem, knights and enchantments etc but little of interest if you've already read things like the Faerie Queen.

This is the first complete English translation of the great Italian renaissance epic, the forerunner of Ariosto's even more famous Orlando Furioso which I read many years ago in Harrington's Elizabethan translation after reading Pratt and De Camp's Castle of Iron set in that world. I have long wanted to erad Boiardo, but my Italian is not good enough to read the original, so I was very glad to get this translation even if it was a bit expensive.

Boiardo was an excellent plot juggler, and this translation gives me a good time, for "who is Not a fool for love?"
The original was extant by 1494, and well established in the imagination of Europe.