Verità, amore, responsabilità: Le figure femminili ne by Matteo Bosisio (review)

Torquato Tasso (1544–1595) looms large over the literary landscape of the late Italian Renaissance. Among extensive critical studies of Tasso's oeuvre, however, his lone tragedy–the Re Torrismondo (1587)–has often been overlooked. Matteo Bosisio's Verità, amore, reponsabilità: Le figure femminili ne Il Re Torrismondo offers a welcome contribution to recent efforts seeking to remedy this neglect. Bosisio's careful and detailed study investigates how the Torrismondo innovates upon tragic norms through the drama's women and their relationships with the themes of love, truth, and responsibility. Bosisio argues that while the Torrismondo's women embody trends of late 16^th-century Italian tragedy–wherein women become more autonomous and volatile rather than providing moral exempla or static interlocutors–they also represent an advance in tragic praxis: Tasso divides the Torrismondo's narrative inertia between its women, forcing the male protagonist, King Torrismondo, to react to their actions. These women should therefore be read, Bosisio says, as true coprotagonists–essential characters whose roles propel the action of the drama forward.

Four chapters analyze one woman each: there is Alvida, a Norwegian princess, who believes herself betrothed to Torrismondo, king of the Goths, but he has actually retrieved her for his friend (and Norwegian arch-enemy) Germondo, King of Sweden; Alvida's nurse (never named beyond her occupation); Rosmonda, princess and sister of Torrismondo, with whom she is in love (she alone knows that they are not blood-relatives); and Rusilla, queen mother of the Goths. Bosisio's clear-cut structuring of the work prefigures a methodical and meticulous analysis of each woman's role in the tragedy.

But we begin with the introduction, which opens with a well-documented overview of the Torrismondo's trajectory from the Renaissance to modernity as well as a useful summary of preceding critical approaches. Bosisio avoids gender theory, or anachronistic methodologies in favor of a reading with attention to historical and cultural context. His study therefore relies on close poetic analysis and comparative readings with likely texts of influence, including ancient and coeval tragedies and tragic theory; an (unauthorized) early draft of the Torrismondo (the Tragedia non finita (1582), commonly referred to as Galealto re di Norvegia); Renaissance treatises on love and women; and Tasso's remaining oeuvre. Over the course of the book, the associations Bosisio draws provide a wonderful repository of spunti di studio for those interested in comparativism.

Bosisio's first chapter analyzes Alvida, who, on the voyage from Norway, consummates her love with Torrismondo. But soon thereafter, love-fueled anxiety causes her to misinterpret the king's behavior as a rejection. A rapid decline follows; among a number of close readings and intertextual suggestions, Bosisio traces, for example, how Alvida's speech progresses from a "monologare convenzionale" to a "parlar disgiunto" (51). In her crisis, Alvida loses sight of both the truth and her familial responsibility to avenge her brother's death by Germondo's troops. All comes to a head in Act V, when Alvida has become so disoriented that she believes Torrismondo's revelation of their kinship to be a lie to avoid marrying her. Here, Bosisio offers a most interesting view on incest's secondary role in the play. In a circumstance where (perceived) unrequited love seems more devastating than the crime of incest, the hidden dangers of love–"un labirinto di sensazioni e paure dal quale è impossibile uscire" (34)–become irrefutable. And in fact Alvida cannot escape the labyrinth: she commits suicide, prompting Torrismondo's own. Whereas suicide by tragic women typically epitomizes uncompromising moral resoluteness, Bosisio notes, Alvida's is merely the catastrophic finale of love's nefarious grasp.

Alvida's nurse, the focus of Chapter 2, is introduced within the bounds of archetype; her early verses provide a voice of reason for Alvida, suggesting that Torrismondo's strange behavior is motivated by love. Once Alvida leaves the stage, however, the nurse's own uncertainties emerge in a scattered monologue. From...