Reporter Volume 26, No.24 April 13, 1995

By PATRICIA DONOVAN
News Bureau Staff
The name "Torquato Tasso" does not trip easily off the
English-speaking tongue, nor is Tasso known to most of us even by
reputation. He is, however, the greatest poet of the late Italian
Renaissance, a genius celebrated in particular for his controversial
16th century heroic epic, "Jerusalem Liberated," a reconciliation of
invention and historical truth that dealt with the capture of
Jerusalem during the First Crusade.
	The Italian section of the UB Department of Modern Languages
and Literatures will present a free public lecture about Tasso by
Italy's leading Renaissance scholar, Sergio Zatti, professor at the
University of Genoa, at 2 p.m. on Monday, April 24, in 830 Clemens
Hall on the UB North Campus.
	The lecture is one of a series to be presented at major
American universities this year, the 400th anniversary of Tasso's
death. Zatti also will lecture at Princeton and Columbia universities,
the University of Chicago, New York University and the Newberry
Library of Chicago.
	The lecture, entitled "The Epic in an Age of Dissimulation,"
will consider the extreme public, professional and personal
difficulties encountered by Tasso after publishing a brilliant work
that violated the moral and literary canons of the time.
	The conflict between the sensuous ideals Tasso so lyrically
articulated in his epic and other works and his own unwarranted
scruples about his Catholic religious orthodoxy aggravated the poet's
latent severe persecution mania. As a result, Tasso alternated for
more than 15 years between periods of extreme creative invention and
tormented submission to the moral and literary biases of the period.
inally, after many years of
	forced hospitalization for his mental disorders, Tasso
produced a "new" version of "Jerusalem Liberated" titled "Jerusalem
Conquered" and dedicated it to his current patron, a nephew of Pope
Clement VIII. The work was a poetic failure but demonstrated the
extent of the author's final, and rather desperately justified,
submission to the rigid morality of the Counter Reformation.
	Tasso's restless, tormented life, his alleged romantic
attachments and his real or imagined persecutions became the stuff of
cultural legend. He became a well-known literary subject in 17th
century Italy and later, throughout 18th and 19th century Europe, and
was generally regarded during those periods to be a misunderstood and
persecuted genius.
	For further information about the lecture, contact Maria
Guiterrez of the UB Department of Modern Languages and Literatures, at
645-2191.