As its title suggests, Saracens and Their World in Boiardo and Ariosto examines the representation of the Saracen world—what Boiardo and Ariosto typically describe as Paganìa—in the Innamoramento de Orlando and its more famous sequel, the Orlando furioso. It is worth noting from the onset that Saracens and Their World in Boiardo and Ariosto is engaging, written with clarity and verve, very well researched and soundly structured, rich with thought-provoking observations about the chivalric tradition, and nuanced in its consideration of the exchanges (cultural and economic) between Western European states, particularly in the Italian peninsula, and the archipelago of Islamic polities across North Africa and Asia.

In discussing the interplay between, on the one hand, the Innamoramento and the Furioso, and, on the other, their socio-cultural milieu, Maria Pavlova anchors her analysis to two goals she puts forth in her introduction: first, to reconstruct the possible connections between the fictional universes that Boiardo and Ariosto created and the historical realities of the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries; second, to contextualize their poems within the vast tradition of late medieval and early Renaissance chivalric literature. A key contention of the book is that Boiardo and Ariosto depict the Saracens in a generally positive light, often emphasizing the Muslim warriors’ chivalric values to an even greater degree than we see when they represent the Christian knights’ valor. Particularly convincing are the sections dedicated to the themes of cortesia and honor, qualities that, Pavlova posits, serve as ideological and narrative catalysts more frequently than the characters’ religious loyalties. Indeed, in a passage of her introduction, she argues that “the Saracen creed is to a large extent a mirror image of Christianity with some elements borrowed from ancient Paganism” (27). Moreover, Pavlova correctly observes that some Italian lords, including the dukes of Ferrara Borso and Ercole d'Este, entertained respectful, and even friendly, relationships (often dictated by self-interest) with the Turkish rulers. Although her reading of the Furioso perhaps underestimates the political dimension of Ariosto's poem both with respect to the Ottoman gains in the Balkans and the crisis of the Italian city-states in the early sixteenth century, Pavlova persuasively points out that it would be a mistake to interpret the Innamoramento or the Furioso as political allegories whose poetic worlds flatly reflect the historical realities of the time.

Irrespective of whether any given reader subscribes to all aspects of Pavlova's argumentation (and one may disagree with some of her conclusions—for instance, on Boiardo's purported view that Christian Europe owes a great deal to Paganìa in chapter 3, or Ariosto's treatment of Angelica and, more broadly, of erotic desire in chapter 4), the results of her work are undoubtedly praiseworthy. Saracens and Their World in Boiardo and Ariosto is most compelling when it deals with the legacy of the chivalric texts that preceded and, to some extent, paved the way to the two masterpieces around which the book gravitates. In these sections, Pavlova deploys with remarkable dexterity the repertoire of characters, tales, and topoi that Boiardo and Ariosto inherited (and from which they occasionally departed). While the influence of the Latin epics, from Virgil's Aeneid to Statius's Thebaid, remains an indispensable cornerstone of the study of Renaissance heroic poems, Pavlova effectively draws our attention to works such as the Aspramonte, Falconetto, and Fatti di Spagna.

Saracens and Their World in Boiardo and Ariosto is organized into an introduction, five chapters, and a conclusion. The first chapter introduces the question of how Islam was perceived in Renaissance Italy; chapters 2 and 3 are dedicated to Boiardo, while 4 and 5 focus on Ariosto. Chapter 5 addresses in greater depth the final duel between Rodomonte and Ruggiero that vividly showcases the centrality of knightly cortesia and honor (and their opposite, betrayal) in a crucial moment of Ariosto's poem. Pavlova's book also offers two useful appendixes that meticulously survey the Saracen characters in the Innamoramento and the Furioso. This accomplished study is a valuable resource for scholars of Renaissance Italy, of the relationship between Islam and Western Christendom, of chivalric literature of the medieval and early modern periods, and of Italian literature and history more broadly.