Torquato tasso biography meaning

Perhaps the most complex representative of the difficult Counter-Reformation period, Torquato Tasso was a melancholic, roaming courtier, a true genius often misunderstood by his own protectors.

At the time of his stay in Bologna as a law student, he had not yet been 'affected' by that obsession with Catholic orthodoxy that would lead him to devote his entire life to continuous reinterpretations of his Gerusalemme Liberata (Jerusalem Delivered).

Torquato Tasso was born in Sorrento in 1544 to a rich and noble family at that time employed by the Sanseverino family, princes of Salerno in the Hapsburg kingdom of Naples.

His father, Bernardo Tasso, was a Venetian man of letters and a courtier from the Bergamo nobility, while his mother, Porzia de' Rossi, belonged to the Tuscan aristocracy.

Torquato's childhood was conditioned by the many moves his father had to make to remain in Ferrante Sanseverino's retinue.

After their stay in Naples (1550-1554), where th