Torquato Tasso – författare

'The bitter tragedy of human life-- horrors of death, attack, retreat, advance, and the great game of Destiny and Chance. ' In The Liberation of Jerusalem (Gerusalemme liberata, 1581), Torquato Tasso set out to write an epic to rival the Iliad and the Aeneid. Unlike his predecessors, he took his subject not from myth but from history: the Christian capture of Jerusalem during the First Crusade. The siege of the city is played out alongside a magical romance of love and sacrifice, in which the Christian knight Rinaldo succumbs to the charms of the pagan sorceress Armida, and the warrior maiden Clorinda inspires a fatal passion in the Christian Tancred.Tasso's masterpiece left its mark on writers from Spenser and Milton to Goethe and Byron, and inspired countless painters and composers. This is the first English translation in modern times that faithfully reflects both the sense and the verse form of the original. Max Wickert's fine rendering is introduced by Mark Davie, who places Tasso's poem in the context of his life and times and points to the qualities that have ensured its lasting impact on Western culture. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

Torquato Tasso (1544–95) var den italienska senrenässansens främste poet. Han räknades tillsammans med Shakespeare och Cervantes som en av sin tids största diktare, känd bland annat för sitt epos Det befriade Jerusalem (1581). En höjdpunkt i hans författarskap var dramat Aminta, som nu för första gången sedan 1870-talet når en svensk publik.

Om större delen av Tassos verk ”lever av dialektiken mellan begär och förbud, så betecknar Aminta en provisorisk och kortvarig triumf för det förra, för såväl hjärtats som könets desire”, skriver Anders Cullhed i förordet. Men diktarens karaktäristiska melankoli, fortsätter han, röjer sig också här, och genom skådespelet ”glimrar ett pärlband av påminnelser om ungdomens snabba flykt, om den tidstypiska känslan av en åldrande värld – det är sent på jorden! – och om att tiden själv förrinner”. Tilltagande förföljelsemani gjorde att Tasso under perioder måste omhändertas. Hans tragiska öde har lockat senare tiders diktare, exempelvis Goethes romantiserande drama Torquato Tasso (1790). Utgåvan har italiensk parallelltext.

Översatt och tolkad av: Ingvar Björkeson

''The bitter tragedy of human life-- horrors of death, attack, retreat, advance, and the great game of Destiny and Chance. '' In The Liberation of Jerusalem (Gerusalemme liberata, 1581), Torquato Tasso set out to write an epic to rival the Iliad and the Aeneid. Unlike his predecessors, he took his subject not from myth but from history: the Christian capture of Jerusalem during the First Crusade. The siege of the city is played out alongside a magical romance of love and sacrifice, in which the Christian knight Rinaldo succumbs to the charms of the pagan sorceress Armida, and the warrior maiden Clorinda inspires a fatal passion in the Christian Tancred. Tasso''s masterpiece left its mark on writers from Spenser and Milton to Goethe and Byron, and inspired countless painters and composers. This is the first English translation in modern times that faithfully reflects both the sense and the verse form of the original. Max Wickert''s fine rendering is introduced by Mark Davie, who places Tasso''s poem in the context of his life and times and points to the qualities that have ensured its lasting impact on Western culture. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World''s Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford''s commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

''The bitter tragedy of human life-- horrors of death, attack, retreat, advance, and the great game of Destiny and Chance. '' In The Liberation of Jerusalem (Gerusalemme liberata, 1581), Torquato Tasso set out to write an epic to rival the Iliad and the Aeneid. Unlike his predecessors, he took his subject not from myth but from history: the Christian capture of Jerusalem during the First Crusade. The siege of the city is played out alongside a magical romance of love and sacrifice, in which the Christian knight Rinaldo succumbs to the charms of the pagan sorceress Armida, and the warrior maiden Clorinda inspires a fatal passion in the Christian Tancred. Tasso''s masterpiece left its mark on writers from Spenser and Milton to Goethe and Byron, and inspired countless painters and composers. This is the first English translation in modern times that faithfully reflects both the sense and the verse form of the original. Max Wickert''s fine rendering is introduced by Mark Davie, who places Tasso''s poem in the context of his life and times and points to the qualities that have ensured its lasting impact on Western culture. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World''s Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford''s commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

Late in the eleventh century the First Crusade culminated in the conquest of Jerusalem by Christian armies. Five centuries later, when Torquato Tasso began to search for a subject worthy of an epic, Jerusalem was governed by a sultan, Europe was in the crisis of religious division, and the Crusades were a nostalgic memory. Tasso turned to the First Crusade both as a subject that would test his poetic ambition and as a reflection on the quandaries of his own time. He sought to create a masterpiece that would deserve comparison with the great epics of the past. Gerusalemme liberata became one of the most widely read and cherished books of the Renaissance. First published in 1581, it was translated into English by Edward Fairfax in 1600. That translation has been the standard, even though Fairfax was only a good, not a great, poet. Fairfax tried to fit Tasso's verse into Spenserian stanzas, adding to and subtracting from the original and often changing Tasso's meaning.Anthony Esolen's new translation captures the delight of Tasso's descriptions, the different voices of its cast of characters, the shadings between glory and tragedy-and it does all this in an English as powerful and clear as Tasso's Italian. Tasso's masterpiece finally emerges as an English masterpiece.

Ralph Nash, in his approach to Gerusalemme Liberata, concluded that a close, fluent translation in prose of Tasso''s epic would offer the most successful rendering of this important chivalric romance.

This tranlation of Torquato Tasso's ll re Torrismondo, the first to be made directly from the Italian into English, is intended to help those students and scholars who do not command the language of the original text. This translation provides readers with a wider range of the Italian tragedy as a genre; it also allows readers to acquire a deeper awareness of the entire spectrum of the Italian Renaissance in its final brilliance. Tasso's King Torrismondo provides an example of Neo-Aristotelian dramatic theory of the second half of the fifteenth century. It incorporates into the dramatic genre elements of the epic lyric poem. Tasso's langugae can also be studied as an example of "imitation" of Virgil, Dante, Petrach, and Tasso's own epic. Finally, Tasso's Torrismondo affords us an opportunity of comparative analysis of French, English, and Spanish literature in the development of tragedy as a European genre.

This tranlation of Torquato Tasso's ll re Torrismondo, the first to be made directly from the Italian into English, is intended to help those students and scholars who do not command the language of the original text. This translation provides readers with a wider range of the Italian tragedy as a genre; it also allows readers to acquire a deeper awareness of the entire spectrum of the Italian Renaissance in its final brilliance. Tasso's King Torrismondo provides an example of Neo-Aristotelian dramatic theory of the second half of the fifteenth century. It incorporates into the dramatic genre elements of the epic lyric poem. Tasso's langugae can also be studied as an example of "imitation" of Virgil, Dante, Petrach, and Tasso's own epic. Finally, Tasso's Torrismondo affords us an opportunity of comparative analysis of French, English, and Spanish literature in the development of tragedy as a European genre.