Mondo creato

The Gerusalemme Conquistata and the Mondo creato are the the products of Tasso’s most intensive work in the period after Sant’Anna. Although Giovan Battista Manso’s imaginative story of a poem conceived in connection with conversations in Naples seems doubtful, it is likely that Tasso started work on the Mondo creato in 1590, continuing for some time on a work that points to the increasing centrality of the religious themes and studies in Tasso’s final years. He was familiar with the Création du monde by the French poet Du Bartas, but his retelling in verse of the story of Genesis referred above all to the Church Fathers, Ambrose and Basil, indicating also a wide range of other sacred readings, including St Thomas, Pseudo-Dionysius, Gregory of Nazianzus and Augustine, as well as “naturalistic” writers such as Aristotle and authors of treatises written in Tasso’s own age. A precious manuscript preserved in Parma’s Biblioteca Palatina, copied by Angelo Ingegneri but with annotations in Tasso’s hand, contains notes alongside the lines of the poem specifying the sources used by the poet and thereby providing an impressive image both of the sacred culture acquired and the sheer quantity of reading preceding and often conditioning Tasso’s writing. Nonetheless, the Mondo creato is not merely a display of erudition but is a precise account of the stages of creation in which Tasso describes the marvels and complex order established by God in the universe (including the heavens, seasons, animals and grass), depicting humanity’s weakness in relation to divine power. In doing so, Tasso gives voice to a vision that is both personal and intimately religious.