LITERARY THEORY AND THE PRACTICE OF NARRATIVE POETRY: YOUNG TASSO'S HEROIC PROJECT AND THE EPIC TRADITION FROM HOMER TO MILTON

Among epic poets Torquato Tasso holds a special place. He not only composed one of the paragons of that genre, the Gerusalemme liberata, but he also elaborated the rationale behind that kind of poetry in numerous works of literary theory. This theoretical self-consciousness makes him an instructive guide to generic issues of narrative poetry in the tradition that he inherited from Homer and his successors and in the legacy that he imparted to his own heirs, like Spenser and Milton.;The following pages explore the relationship between Tasso's early theories about the epic and the most triumphant results of his practice in that genre. Employing central terms of that discussion--the narrator's role, the imaginative uses of history and religion, unity of plot, allegory and mimesis, the tragic element in heroic poetry--they also address other texts: The Odyssey, The Divine Comedy, Orlando furioso, and Paradise Lost. Recent theories of oral composition open fresh perspectives on neo-Aristotelian poetics, and contemporary approaches like psychoanalysis and deconstruction sponsor new questions about a traditional form while themselves undergoing pointed revision. Tasso's theoretical treatises are set in appropriate chronological relation to the Gerusalemme liberata, and Erik Erikson's reworking of Freud's theories with a regard for the influence of historical conditions helps to reorient key issues of Milton and Tasso studies. An annotated translation of the Discorsi dell'arte poetica, which have never before been published in English, stands as an appendix to this dissertation.