The Liberation of Jerusalem
$27.42
- Paperback
496 pages
- Release Date
31 January 2009
Summary
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.
Book Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780199535354 |
|---|---|
| ISBN-10: | 0199535353 |
| Author: | Torquato Tasso, Max Wickert, Mark Davie |
| Publisher: | Oxford University Press |
| Imprint: | Oxford University Press |
| Format: | Paperback |
| Number of Pages: | 496 |
| Release Date: | 31 January 2009 |
| Weight: | 359g |
| Dimensions: | 28mm x 129mm x 197mm |
| Series: | Oxford World's Classics |
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Critics Review
The translation is accompanied by a clear, detailed and helpful introduction by Mark Davie. * David Robey, Times Literary Supplement *
Wickert’s is a remarkable achievement…the translation is consistently faithful to almost every detail of the content. * David Robey, Times Literary Supplement *
Torquato Tasso
Max Wickert is a poet whose poems and verse translations have been published in various American journals. Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Carl Dennis describes his translation as capturing “both the dignity and the energy of Tasso’s epic, its artfulness and its passion. It’s an impressive achievement.”
Mark Davie has published studies on various aspects of Italian literature, primarily from the Dante to the Renaissance period. He has contributed to The Oxford Companion to Italian Literature and serves as the Italian Editor of the Modern Language Review.
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