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Updated: May 24, 2025
The Faerie Queene reflects, perhaps, more fully than any other English work, the many-sided literary influences of the Renascence. It was the blossom of a richly composite culture. Its immediate models were Ariosto's Orlando Furioso, the first forty cantos of which were published in 1515, and Tasso's Gerusalemme Liberata, printed in 1581.
You will there read that the lion, fatigued, harassed, out of breath, at length cried for quarter, and the justice must be rendered him to say that he gave as much as he required. Oh! those were glorious times, sire, strewed over with battles like one of Tasso's or Ariosto's epics. The wonders of those times, to which the people of ours would refuse belief, were every-day occurrences.
'Whatever I have said to the disadvantage of these three poems, holds much stronger against Tasso's 'Gierusalemme': it is true he has very fine and glaring rays of poetry; but then they are only meteors, they dazzle, then disappear, and are succeeded by false thoughts, poor 'concetti', and absurd impossibilities; witness the Fish and the Parrot; extravagancies unworthy of an heroic poem, and would much better have become Ariosto, who professes 'le coglionerie'.
'Whatever I have said to the disadvantage of these three poems, holds much stronger against Tasso's 'Gierusalemme': it is true he has very fine and glaring rays of poetry; but then they are only meteors, they dazzle, then disappear, and are succeeded by false thoughts, poor 'concetti', and absurd impossibilities; witness the Fish and the Parrot; extravagancies unworthy of an heroic poem, and would much better have become Ariosto, who professes 'le coglionerie'.
The main amorous action centres round Cloris, beloved of Amyntas and Carinus, the latter of whom is in his turn loved by Amarillis. Carinus' hopes are founded on the fact that, in imitation of Tasso's Aminta, he has rescued Cloris from the hands of a satyr, while Amyntas bases his upon certain signs of favour shown him.
Ariosto's enchantress Alcina was the model for Tasso's better-known Armida, who provided both Lulli and Gluck with one of their most dramatic heroines, and Burney says, with some justice, that Handel's Alcina gave birth to all the Armidas and Rinaldos of modern times.
Her poetical works, including her translation into Dutch verse of Tasso's Gerusalemme Liberata, have almost all unfortunately perished, but a single ode that survives "the Ode to a Nightingale" is an effort not unworthy of Shelley and shows her possession of a true lyrical gift. At Muiden the presence of the "beautiful" Tesselschade was almost indispensable.
Tasso's glory is like a star, burning with a lovely light in the deep azure; Calvin's is like the sun, whose waxing splendour is irradiating two hemispheres. The palace of the illustrious Renée, now the Austrian and Papal Legations, and literally a barrack for soldiers, has no pretensions to beauty.
TASSO'S conversation, which his friend Manso has attempted to preserve for us, was not agreeable.
I am aware I may be here reminded of the necessity of rendering instruction agreeable to youth, and of Tasso's infusion of honey into the medicine prepared for a child; but an age in which children are taught the driest doctrines by the insinuating method of instructive games, has little reason to dread the consequences of study being rendered too serious or severe.
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