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Tasso's First Discourse On The Art Of Poetry As A Guide To The Gerusalemme Liberata, Lawrence F. Rhu

Quidditas

The relationship between Tasso's early Discorsi dell'arte poetica and his Gerusalemme liberata needs clarification for a variety of reasons. The existence of a later poetics – the Discorsi del poema eroico, which modifies and expands the earlier version – has frequently side-tracked readers into a text that more properly pertains to Tasso's later version of his epic, the Gerusalemme conquistata. The availability of the second poetics in English, while the first remains inaccessible to readers without Italian, has also encouraged this inappropriate pairing. Further, the current vogue of literary theory tends to promote a view of Tasso's poetics …