Homer

“Quando scrissi a Vostra Signoria l’altro giorno non avea letto Omero di fresco e tutto ciò che affermai forse troppo arditamente affermai, fidandomi nella memoria. Ho poi in questi giorni trascorso l’Iliade e trovo non essermi ingannato punto” [“When I wrote to your Lordship the other day I had not read Homer recently and all my claims were perhaps too boldly made, from memory. In these past days, I have gone through the Iliad and I find that I was not mistaken at all” (translated from T. Tasso, Lettere poetiche, edited by C. Molinari, Parma, Guanda, Fondazione Pietro Bembo, 1995, 126)]. This is one of the many passages in the Lettere poetiche in which the names of Homer and Virgil crop up as authoritative precedents that guided Tasso in the composition of his epic. Homer in particular is taken by Tasso as a model in planning plot development, and used also in his defence in the controversy on poetics. Rinaldo has the role of tragic hero like Achilles in the Iliad; the clashes between the Crusaders and the Pagans is patterned on the battles between the Trojans and Greeks. Although on several occasions Tasso expressed doubts concerning the decorum of Homer’s precepts, the model of the Iliad took on even greater importance later on, both in the Discorsi del poema eroico, and above all in the octaves of the Conquistata, where Homer’s influence is much more strongly felt following Tasso’s corrections to text of the Liberata. Tasso’s profound knowledge of Homer left its mark also in a volume containing his annotations, namely Valla’s translation of Homer printed in Lyons in 1541 and preserved at the Cornell University Libraries.