SOURCE: Stephens, Walter. “Trickster, Textor, Architect, Thief: Craft and Comedy in Gerusalemme Liberata.” In Renaissance Transactions: Ariosto and Tasso, edited by Valeria Finucci, pp. 146-77. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1999.

In the following essay, Stephens argues that Tasso uses Homeric imitations in Gerusalemme liberata that have important implications for the poem and its representation of authorship.

In canto 18 of Gerusalemme liberata [GL], writing irrupts into the plot of Tasso's highly intertextual poem. Attacked by a falcon, a carrier pigeon takes refuge with Goffredo, who discovers a letter from the Egyptian general Emireno to King Aladino in Jerusalem, announcing the imminent arrival of Muslim reinforcements for the besieged town. As if this adaptation of Homeric bird omens were not already abundantly explicit, Goffredo announces to his assembled lieutenants that the messenger (freighted with overtones of the Holy Spirit) has brought a revelation from divine providence: “—Vedete come il...