by Torquato Tasso

Torquato Tasso (1544-95) was born in Sorrento, Italy. At the age of 10, he was forced to literally follow in the footsteps of his father, the poet Bernardo Tasso, who moved first to Rome, then to Bergamo, Urbino, and Venice. The elder Tasso focused on writing compositions for his various patrons and writing his own epic poem, the Amadigi (1560, based on a Spanish chivalric romance Amadis de Gaula [1508]). At the age of 16, the younger Tasso had already begun a first attempt at the subject of Jerusalem Delivered, which he abandoned in order to focus on the Rinaldo, a short poem about the adventures of the legendary knight. His education began at the court of Urbino and continued at the universities of Bologna and Padova from 1560 to 1565. That same year, 1565, saw the beginning of his lifelong relationship to the Este family...