This work of disvaluation and destruction is
to be detected in the expressive tone in the
proems to the separate cantos, in the digressive
argumentations, in the observations interjected,
in the repetitions, in the use of vocables, in the
phrasing and the arrangement of periods, and
above all in the frequent comparisons that form
pictures which rather than intensifying the emo-
tion, cause it to take a different path, in the in-
terruptions to the narrative, sometimes occur-
ring at their most dramatic point, in the nimble
passage to other narratives of a different and
often opposite nature. Yet the palpable part
of this whole, what it is possible to segregate
and to analyse as elements of style, forms but a
small part of the impalpable whole, which flows
along like a tenuous fluid, and since it is soul, we
feel it with our soul, though we cannot touch it
with our hands, even though they be armed with
scholastic pincers.

And this tone is the often noted and named,
but never clearly defined irony of Ariosto; it
has not been well-defined, because described as
a kind of jesting or mockery, similar or coinci-
dent with what Ariosto sometimes employed in
his descriptions of knightly personages and their
adventures. It has thus been both restricted

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