Tasso's Petrarch: The Lyric Means to Epic Ends

This paper argues that Petrarchan lyric poetics were instrumental for Tasso's development of a successful vernacular epic. Following discussions of epic and lyric in his prose, I trace the relationship between Tasso's poetic theory and practice by examining Petrarchan allusions in the Gerusalemme liberata. I show how the Rime sparse becomes instrumental for Tasso's successful integration of romance variety and meraviglia into the cinquecento epic. More important, by programmatically associating the romance wandering (errare) of the Liberata with the lyric giovenile errore of the Rime sparse, Tasso uses this lyric frame to reconcile the seemingly antithetical impulses of romance wandering and epic teleology.