Who Wants to Live Forever?: Overcoming Poetic Immortality in Torquato Tasso’s Gerusalemme Conquistata

While Torquato Tasso’s Gerusalemme Liberata (1581) ambivalently employs a Homeric poetics of mourning—commemorating dead warriors in epic song—his later revisio of the poem, the Gerusalemme Conquistata (1593), demonstrates the problems such poetics pose within a Christian context. Focusing on the changes Tasso makes to two of his characters—the Christian knight, Tancredi, and the pagan warrior, Argante—this article examines how the Conquistata is actively engaged in distancing itself from Homeric kleos. The revised poem imitates the death of Hector precisely in order to present the impulse to mourn fallen heroes as a dangerous temptation away from Christian doctrine.