Gerusalemme conquistata

…version of his epic (Gerusalemme conquistata, published 1593), a poetic failure that reveals the extent of Tasso’s final submission to the moral and literary prejudices of the times. He wrote two more religious poems (Lagrime di Maria Vergine and Lagrime di Gesù Cristo), and in June 1594 he went…

In the subsequent Gerusalemme conquistata (1593; “Jerusalem Vanquished”), Tasso imitated Homer and recast his poem according to more rigid Aristotelian rules and the ideals of the Roman Catholic church’s reaction against the Protestant Reformation, known as the Counter-Reformation. Tasso’s conflict had ended in the victory of the moralistic…