SOURCE: Tasso, Torquato “Book II.” In Discourses on the Heroic Poem, translated by Mariella Cavalchini and Irene Samuel, pp. 57-110. Oxford at the Claredon Press, 1973.

In the following excerpt originally published in 1594, Tasso discusses Orlando furioso in terms of the Aristotelian concept of epic unit.

[The poet] must see to it that his fable (by fable I mean the form of the poem that can be defined as the weaving or composition of its events)—he must see to it, I say, that the fable he wishes to fashion is entire, or, as we may put it, whole, that it is of an appropriate magnitude, and that it is one. (p. 62)

The fable is to be whole or entire because it is to be perfect, and nothing can be perfect that is not entire. Perfection and integrity will be found in the fable if it possesses a beginning...