Renaissance Transactions: Ariosto and Tasso

The controversy generated in Italy by the writings of Ludovico Ariosto and Torquato Tasso during the 16th century was the first historically important debate on what constitutes modern literature. Applying current critical theories and tools, the essays in Renaissance Transactions re-examine these two provocative poet-thinkers, the debate they inspired, and the reasons why that debate remains relevant today. Resituating these writers’ work in the context of the Renaissance while also offering appraisals of their uncanny postmodernity , the contributors to this volume focus primarily on Ariosto’s Orlando furioso and Tasso’s Gerusalemme liberata . Arguing that Ariosto and Tasso are still central to the debate on what constitutes modern narrative, this collection should be valuable to scholars of Italian literature, literary history, critical theory and the Renaissance.