In 1875, having already published the five volumes of Tasso’s epistolary, Cesare Guasti collected under the title of Prose diverse all Tasso’s prose writings other than the dialogues and two theoretical works, Discorsi dell’arte poetica and Discorsi del poema eroico. Together with the Giudicio on the Conquistata, Tasso’s last discussion on epic, and several texts related to the controversy surrounding the Liberata, Guasti’s collection contains material that ranges widely in scope and ambition, from different periods of Tasso’s life. Included are brief orations such as that delivered on the death of Stefano Santini, fellow member of the Accademia degli Eterei, the public readings held at the Academy in Ferrara on the poems by Della Casa and Giovan Battista Pigna, and discourses written in connection with a variety of occasions and on a wide range of topics (the reciprocal love between father and son, jealousy, heroic virtue, feminine virtue, etc). There are also more important writings such as the Risposta di Roma a Plutarco and the Trattato del Secretario, structured in two parts and first printed in 1587. In the Trattato, using precepts widely adopted in later decades, Tasso provides his own description of the duties and limits of a secretario (including the use of individual rhetorical skills in official communications), as a way to outline a possible balance in the problematic relationship between men of letters and princes in the life of the court at the end of the sixteenth century.

Title page from an edition of Tasso’s Lettera on customs, written in connection with his journey to France