Curiositas e caligo: sondaggi sulla sopravvivenza di due antichi topoi da Boezio a Tasso

At the time of his imprisonment in Ferrara Tasso wrote an important letter-confession to his mentor and patron Scipione Gonzaga (15 april 1579). The article examines in detail the presence of literary models even in this most ‘spontaneous’ and direct expression of feelings of repentance and christian faith (D. Quint). Instead of art imitating life, this letter is in fact an example of life imitating art, in that Tasso builds it on a series of literary antecedents, first of all, the ‘confession’ of his own literary creature, Mago d’Ascalona, in Canto XIV of the Gerusalemme Liberata. Other models intersect this careful self-staging of the poet as prisoner and repentant, namely Boethius and Augustine, both read and known by Tasso. The key words are curiositas, the insane curiosity to challenge God’s given boundaries, and caligo, the mist that clots our sight unless man is touched by the Grace. The article follows Tasso’s piecing together of his antecedents (Augustine as reread by Petrarch; Boethius through the Mago d’Ascalona) to show how literature and tradition far from stifling Tasso’s expression of feelings, actually helped him build a more credible - to himself in the first place - scenario of fall and resurrection.