A Study Guide for Torquato Tasso's "Gerusalemme Liberata"

By Gale and Cengage

A Study Guide for Torquato Tasso's "Gerusalemme Liberata," excerpted from Gale's acclaimed Epics for Students. This concise study guide includes plot summary; character analysis; author biography; study questions; historical context; suggestions for further reading; and much more. For any literature project, trust Epics for Students for all of your research needs.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Cengage Learning - Gale
• Release date: Sep 20, 2016
• ISBN: 9781535823869

Book preview

10

Gerusalemme Liberata

Torquato Tasso

1581

Introduction

When Torquato Tasso's Gerusalemme Liberata (Jerusalem Delivered) first appeared in a pirated edition in 1579, it was hailed as a great, albeit slightly flawed, art epic in the tradition of Dante and Virgil. Tasso, himself, was angry that the poem had appeared in print without his permission, especially since the manuscript had received some harsh criticism from its first readers. By the time the poem was printed in an authorized version, in 1581, its reputation as an uplifting, patriotic, influential, and brilliant examination of Christian Europe's heroic past was already established. Fellow Italians and other Europeans celebrated the poem's meaning and message. The English poets, especially those writing in the 1650s to the 1680s, were heavily influenced by Tasso's skill as a poet and wordcrafter. Edmund Spencer and John Milton both credited Tasso's poem as an inspiration to their own epic poems, while literary critics such as John Dryden (1631–1700) and William Hayley (1745–1820) praised the work as the best modern epic poem before Paradise Lost (1667). Although his poem achieved great success, Tasso either did not believe the praise or did not like the moral looseness of his characters. By 1591, he had drastically rewritten the poem, eliminated all of the romance, magic, and adventure elements, leaving only a moralistic and religious core. Tasso liked the finished product, but no one else did. Although fewer people read epic and heroic poetry for pleasure in modern times, Gerusalemme Liberata continues to be one of the most important and influential works from the late Italian Renaissance. An accurate and readable translation of this epic by Edward Fairfax, including character notes and an introduction, was published in 2010.

Author Biography

Torquato Tasso, long regarded as the last great poet of the Italian Renaissance, was born in Sorrento, Italy, on March 11, 1544. His father, also an epic poet, had political problems and was forced to move frequently; Tasso's mother died mysteriously when he was just twelve years old. Tasso, like most other poets of his time, sought patrons from among wealthy aristocrats and churchmen. Tasso started the poem that would become Gerusalemme Liberata when he was sixteen and continued working on the poem until 1593. Many critics agree that all three of his major poems, Rinaldo (1562), Gerusalemme Liberata (1581), and Gerusalemme Conquistata, are essentially the same poem with different foci that mirror Tasso's emotional state at the time of each publication.

Rinaldo is an epic