Il punto di vista del naufrago: il II proemio lucreziano nell'opera di Tasso

Abstract: this paper investigates the reasons of the fleeting presence of lucretius’ ii proem in tasso’s works. through a more general overview of his long-standing admiration for the De rerum natura, the paper illustrates how tasso’s literary self-representation and actual self perception – as witnessed by his letters – as helpless victim, actually prevented him from including the “shipwreck with spectator” image in his poetry. In the Liberata, the fruit of his happiest, trouble-free years at ferrara, images of detachment take the semblance of another ancient topos, the Ciceronian Somnium Scipionis. In his later, troubled years, a lifetime of frustrated begging for help from different father-figures brought tasso to collapse the Ciceronian spectator with the loathed lucretian one, in a last damning portrait of his very father Bernardo.