Torquato Tasso
Torquato Tasso Biography
Torquato Tasso was born in Sorrento, near Naples in Italy, in 1544. As a young man he was educated by Jesuits at the Court of the Dukes of Urbino and later studied law and philosophy at the University of Padua. He completed his studies at the University of Bologna, from where he later received an invitation, in 1565, to join the brilliant court of the Este at Ferrara, where he remained for many years. There he wrote a number of beautiful, ltrical poems. He had already achieved fame prior to this when, aged just 18, he published his chivlaric poem Rinaldo in 1562.
Other works by Tasso include the pastoral play Aminta (1573) and his masterpiece Gerusalemme Liberata (Jeusralem Delivered) - an epic of the exploits of Godfrey of Boulogne during the First Crusade. To some extent, Tasso was a victim to his own religious scruples and desire not to violate the rules of good literature which were then commonly accepted. Before publication, he would offer up his work to scrunity from his friends, as well as the church authorities. However, their sometimes harsh criticisms led him to develop an persecution complex. He was also concerned that actions in life, in which he had sometimes been carried away by storms of passion, were not free from reproach. Psychologically unstable, and following a fit of violence, Tasso washe confined, first in a convent, then intermittently (1579–87) in a hospital.
In his last years, he lived with the Gonzagas in Mantua and then wandered restlessly throughout Italy searching for ideal working conditions at other courts. He died at a monastery in Rome in 1595, just one day before he was to have been crowned poet laureate.
Tasso's Jerusalem Delivered has since been lauded both as the embodiment of lyric sentiment and as the greatest poem of the Counter-Reformation. The religious motif is strong, the subplots of love and adventure are well developed, and chivalric exploits are recounted in a majestic classical style. The work had enormous influence on English poets, especially Milton. The legend of Tasso's doomed love for Leonora d'Este was immortalized in works by Byron, Goethe, and others and made Tasso a romantic hero.
Torquato Tasso Poems
The Best Poem Of Torquato Tasso
Hedge, That Divides The Lovely
Hedge, that divides the lovely
Garden, and myself from me,
Never in you so fair a rose I see
As she who is my lady,
Loving, sweet and holy:
Who as I stretch my hand to you
Presses it, so softly, too.
Torquato Tasso Comments
***************** The first attempt to translate Gerusalemme liberata into English was made by Richard Carew, who published his version of the first five cantos as Godfrey of Bulloigne or the recoverie of Hierusalem in 1594. More significant was the complete rendering by Edward Fairfax which appeared in 1600 and has been acclaimed as one of the finest English verse translations. There is also an eighteenth-century translation by John Hoole, and modern versions by Anthony Esolen and Max Wickert. Tasso's poem remained popular among educated English readers and was, at least until the end of the 19th century, considered one of the supreme achievements of Western literature. Somewhat eclipsed in the Modernist period, its fame is showing signs of recovering. ***************** == [from Wikipedia] ==
******************* The fame of Tasso's poem quickly spread throughout the European continent. In England, Sidney, Daniel and Drayton seem to have admired it, and, most importantly, Edmund Spenser described Tasso as an excellente poete and made use of elements from Gerusalemme liberata in The Faerie Queene. The description of Redcrosse's vision of the Heavenly Jerusalem in the First Book owes something to Rinaldo's morning vision in Canto 18 of Gerusalemme. In the twelfth canto of Book Two, Spenser's enchantress Acrasia is partly modelled on Tasso's Armida and the English poet directly imitated two stanzas from the Italian. The portrayal of Satan and the demons in the first two books of Milton's Paradise Lost is also indebted to Tasso's poem. ******************* - [from Wikipedia] -
Torquato Tasso Popularity
Torquato Tasso Popularity
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5/26/2022 10:02:46 AM # 1.0.0.966
A book on Tasso, advertised on the Net, says that Tasso is famous for his Sonnet to his cats at St Ann, and that it is a satirical poem. The book quotes four or 5 lines. Obviously, this sonnet by Tasso has never got into English, and it would go viral if it did get into English and went up on the Net,