Manuscripts

The tradition of Tasso’s manuscripts is a vast a complex topic, marked by numerous gaps resulting from the poet’s troubled life, his discontent and his difficulties with closure, namely, his inability to decide on a definitive text, which led to a multitude of different versions of his works. The Liberata is a case in point, and one of the most complex philological issues in Italian literary history. Although the long process of composing is barely documented in Tasso’s own hand, a watershed is provided by the famous Gonzaga codex, copied by Scipione Gonzaga and identified by Luigi Poma in ms. Ferrara, Biblioteca Ariostea, II 474. Manuscripts in Tasso’s hand are partial or completely absent also for his other major works, as in the case of the Aminta and Rinaldo, and the Mondo creato (of which there are only a few of his correction on the copy in ms. Parma, Biblioteca Palatina, 42), while ms. Naples, Biblioteca Nazionale, Vind. Lat. 72 contains one section only of the Gerusalemme Conquistata. One exception is Tasso’s manuscript of the Giudicio preserved in ms. Varia 521, Biblioteca Reale, Turin. There are several autograph manuscripts of dialogues, while his manuscripts of the early and later Discorsi are missing, as for many of his minor prose works. Many libraries preserve autograph manuscripts of his letters and lyrical poems, although in bits and pieces, rather than in their entirety, making work on critical editions of Tasso’s collected letters and lyrical poems both difficult and necessary (see V. Martignone, Catalogo dei manoscritti delle Rime di Torquato Tasso, Bergamo, Centro Studi Tassiani, 2004).