Encyclopedia > Torquato Tasso

  Article Content

Torquato Tasso

Torquato Tasso, (1544-1595) italian poet of the 16th century, best known for his poem La Gerusalemme liberata ("Jerusalem Delivered[?]"; 1575), in which he describes the imaginary combats between Christians and Muslims at the end of the First Crusade[?], during the siege of Jerusalem.

In the mid-1570s, Tasso began to suffer from what is now believed to be schizophrenia. Legends describe him wandering the streets of Rome half mad, convinced that he was being persecuted. Though he was never fully cured, he was able to function and resumed his writing.

In 1594, Pope Clement VIII called Tasso him to Rome so that he could be crowned poet laureate. Tasso died in 1595, before the honor could be officially conferred on him.

See also: Ludovico Ariosto, "Orlando furioso".

External Link

e-text of Torquato Tasso's work (translated into english):



All Wikipedia text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License

 
  Search Encyclopedia

Search over one million articles, find something about almost anything!
 
 
  
  Featured Article
UU

... page; that is, one that just points to other pages that might otherwise have the same name. If you followed a link here, you might want to go back and fix that ...

 
 
 
This page was created in 28.5 ms