Late in the eleventh century the First Crusade culminated in the conquest of Jerusalem by Christian armies. Five centuries later, when Torquato Tasso began to search for a subject worthy of an epic, Jerusalem was governed by a sultan, Europe was in the crisis of religious division, and the Crusades were a nostalgic memory. Tasso turned to the First Crusade both as a subject that would test his poetic ambition and as a reflection on the quandaries of his own time. He sought to create a masterpiece that would deserve comparison with the great epics of the past.
Gerusalemme liberata became one of the most widely read and cherished books of the Renaissance. First published in 1581, it was translated into English by Edward Fairfax in 1600. That translation has been the standard, even though Fairfax was only a good, not a great, poet. Fairfax tried to fit Tasso's verse into Spenserian stanzas, adding to and subtracting from the original and often changing Tasso's meaning.
Anthony Esolen's new translation captures the delight of Tasso's descriptions, the different voices of its cast of characters, the shadings between glory and tragedy—and it does all this in an English as powerful and clear as Tasso's Italian. Tasso's masterpiece finally emerges as an English masterpiece.
Esolen wittily calls Tasso 'a kind of Caravaggio of poetry,' and his own fluid translation of Jerusalem Delivered brings alive this ars poetica from the opening of Tasso's epic . . . Though not a child and not reluctant, I was up well past midnight several nights in a row, feverishly reading Esolen's wonderful translation, swept along by Tasso's stories and Esolen's accomplished and fast-moving verse.
Thomas P. Roche
Esolen's translation of Tasso is a genuine intellectual and poetic achievement. The accompanying scholarly apparatus makes this the most valuable edition of Tasso available. Esolen has thought through with care what readers need to make their way through the immensity of the poem.
From the Publisher
Esolen's translation of Tasso is a genuine intellectual and poetic achievement. The accompanying scholarly apparatus makes this the most valuable edition of Tasso available. Esolen has thought through with care what readers need to make their way through the immensity of the poem.—Thomas P. Roche, Princeton University
Esolen wittily calls Tasso 'a kind of Caravaggio of poetry,' and his own fluid translation of Jerusalem Delivered brings alive this ars poetica from the opening of Tasso's epic . . . Though not a child and not reluctant, I was up well past midnight several nights in a row, feverishly reading Esolen's wonderful translation, swept along by Tasso's stories and Esolen's accomplished and fast-moving verse.—Andrew Hudgins, author of Babylon in a Jar and After the Lost War
