Dialoghi (1579-1586)

With no trace of the dialogues that Tasso claimed to have written in the 1560s, the earliest evidence of philosophical discourse stems from the end of the following decade, Forno overo de la nobilità, a dialogue composed in the middle of the crisis that was eventually to lead to Tasso’s confinement at Sant’Anna. While this work testifies to his experience with the genre even before his prison years (no doubt influenced by Speroni), during his confinement at Ferrara the dialogue became one of Tasso’s major forms of writing, charged on the one hand with his intention to demonstrate his lucidity, and on the other with his intention to apply his vast accumulated reading to a series of short works, each focusing on matters crucial to the world of the court, including nobility, precedence, dignity and masks. In these works his objective was not really to write actual philosophy but to present and compare the positions of ancient and modern philosophers, with the aim of arriving at an elegant account of doctrine rather than a formulation of truth (significantly, in the Trattato sull’arte del dialogo, in which Tasso reflected on the genre itself). He persevered with this work and even intensified his output during his most difficult years, for example in the early months of 1585, when he wrote Malpiglio overo de la corte, Cavaletta overo de la poesia toscana and Molza overo de l’amore. The most outstanding works produced in these years are Messaggiero, drawing on Plato and revised several times, in which discussions on demonology are linked with precepts on the office of ambassador, and Padre di famiglia, which picks up the tradition of the Oeconomica in the form of a stylized and elegant conversation.