Written just before the work was published, in summer 1562, Tasso’s Preface to the readers of the Rinaldo is his first discussion of poetics. Although limited both in ambition and scope, and consisting only of a few pages, it nonetheless reveals the young poet’s awareness of a context highly influenced by theoretical discussion. Moreover, although Bernardo’s fatherly concern for his son’s future is occasionally apparent in the background, and although the work was written in disregard of the greater security that studying law would have provided, when it came to describing the path followed, Tasso wrote:

Né credo che vi sarà grave che io, discostatomi alquanto da la via de’ moderni, a quei migliori antichi più tosto mi sia voluto accostare: ché non però mi vedrete astretto a le più severe leggi d’Aristotile, le quali spesso hanno reso a voi poco grati que’ poemi che per altro gratissimi vi sarebbono stati; ma solamente quei precetti di lui ho seguito, i quali a voi non togliono il diletto (T. Tasso, Il Rinaldo, a cura di L. Bonfigli, Bari, Laterza, 1936, 4).

[Neither do I believe you will object to the distance I have taken from the path of the modern writers, choosing to move closer to the better authors of antiquity. However, you will not see me bound by Aristotle’s strict laws, which have often put you off poetry which otherwise you would have enjoyed, for I have followed only those precepts which do not interfere with your pleasure (translated from T. Tasso, Il Rinaldo, edited by L. Bonfigli, Bari, Laterza, 1936, 4)].

On the one hand is the implicit reference to poets such as Trissino and material that was unreadable on account of obeisance to Aristotelian precepts, and on the other the mediation and balance that the young Tasso sought to achieve in his work. His aim was to apply Aristotelian precepts without allowing them to restrict creative freedom, and above all to ensure success among readers. Aware of the need for diletto (“pleasure”), and encouraged by the approval of his poetry that he received from literary figures such as Domenico Venier and Danese Cataneo, Tasso provided in his Preface a middle path between the strict followers of Aristotle and those overly fond of Ariosto’s disregard of rules in the Furioso (T. Tasso, Il Rinaldo, edited by L. Bonfigli, Bari, Laterza, 1936, 5).