Aristotle and Plato

In terms of his education and output, Tasso was fully involved in the complex movement of composition and hybridization between Platonic thought and Aristotelian thought that characterized so much of the sixteenth century. Before embarking on his university studies, he read Poetics and the Art of Rhetoric, reference points for the discussion on the epic, later reading Aristotle’s natural studies, Metaphysics and the Organon and especially his work on ethics, also reading the medieval and contemporary commentaries, later making extensive use of these readings in the framework of his Dialoghi. Studying Plato’s dialogues in Ficini’s translation, he used them as a model, borrowing the discussion framework (the Forestiero Napolitano representing Tasso clearly alludes to Plato’s Athenian Stranger), but also the conceptual substance, in particular in key texts such as Symposium, Laws, and Republic. In some of his dialogues, such as Malpiglio secondo or Porzio, dedicated to the theme of virtue, his attempt to reconcile the work of the two philosophers comes across clearly, although he does not succeed in arriving at an original re-elaboration or in going beyond the elegantly-written report. His knowledge of their work, including the lesser-known texts, and the works of classical Neoplatonism, was nonetheless substantial, and studiedly acquired with the intention of fashioning for himself the image of a scholarly poet able to span from literary treatises to dialogues upon virtues and works on natural phenomena, reading the doctrines of classical philosophy alongside those of Christianity.