La Gerusalemme Liberata di Torquato Tasso. [Jerusalem Delivered].

TASSO, Torqato.

$350.00

Item Number: 111064

Milano: Nicolo Bettoni, 1824.

Finely bound example of Torquato Tasso’s epic poem La Gerusalemme Liberata, or Jerusalem Delivered. Octavo, two volumes bound into one in three quarters vellum over marbled boards with gilt titles and tooling to the spine. In very good condition.

First published in 1581, Torquato Tasso's Jerusalem Delivered tells a largely mythified version of the First Crusade in which Christian knights, led by Godfrey of Bouillon, battle Muslims in order to take Jerusalem. The poem is composed of 1,917 stanzas in ottava rima (15,336 hendecasyllabic lines), grouped into twenty cantos of varying length. The poem was hugely successful, and sections or moments from the story were used in works in other media all over Europe, especially in the period before the French Revolution and the Romantic movement, which provided alternative stories combining love, violence, and an exotic setting.