Tasso’s enchantress, Tasso’s captive woman* Journal Articles

abstract

• This essay offers two discoveries concerning lasso's poetics. First, it identifies in theDiscourses on the Heroic Poema critique of allegory on both aesthetic and moral grounds, one that explainsJerusalem Delivered'sabandonment of the “temptress-turned-hag” motif Second, it demonstrates that Armida and Erminia are closely linked to the “captive woman “ topos used by Jerome and Boccaccio to justify Christian adaptations of pagan literature and rhetoric. It is the hermeneutic dimension of this motif that allows Tasso plausibly to convert these beautiful pagan women (and the poetic pleasures they embody) to the exigencies of Christian epic.

authors

• Gough, Melinda

status

• published 

publication date

• 2001

has subject area

• 1901 Art Theory and Criticism (FoR)
• 2005 Literary Studies (FoR)
• 2103 Historical Studies (FoR)
• Literary Studies (Science Metrix)

published in

• Renaissance Quarterly  Journal

keywords

• 47 Language, Communication and Culture
• 4705 Literary Studies

Digital Object Identifier (DOI)

• 10.2307/3176786

start page

• 523

end page

• 552

volume

• 54

issue

• 2