‘Cavallo offers a thoroughly researched examination of the literary sources that shaped Boiardo’s narrative and Ariosto’s interpretation of the material… This is an incredibly rich and rigorous study of Boiardo’s literary world.’

‘This is an excellent study with well-crafted narratives, replete with insights and detailed analysis… This book should appeal not only to Italianists but also to scholars interested in the debate on late medieval and early modern cultural encounters.’

‘The World beyond Europe invites scholars of Italian literature to expand our spatial and cultural horizons by offering a model of original thinking and syncretic knowledge.’

‘Cavallo provides a detailed and fascinating account of how a non-Christian space was represented both in the romance epic tradition and more generally in early modern Italian culture.’

‘This engagingly written book is indispensable not only for Italianists but for students and scholars of romance and epic and any other literature of the European West.’

“This is a valuable book on perhaps the two most important romance epics of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Continuing from her fascinating previous study, Jo Ann Cavallo introduces an international and geographic perspective to uncover the ideology behind Ariosto’s rewriting of Boiardo’s plots. A book like this, which goes into patient detail, is crucial for scholars in other fields who might be unfamiliar with the discussed texts and need to be guided. Its research is state-of-the-art, and it is well deserving of the prestigious Scaglione Prize.”

“This book examines the presentation of the non-Christian world in two fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Italian romance/chivalric epics,  a very topical field in research. It will make an important contribution to a very active debate on the presentation of the ‘other’ and the Saracen and Muslim worlds in Italian literature.”