Jerusalem Delivered

An epic poem by Torquato Tasso, published in definitive form in 1581, that depicts the First Crusade’s siege of Jerusalem through Christian and Muslim characters.

Torquato Tasso: An Italian poet of the Renaissance, best known for the epic poem Jerusalem Delivered. Tasso composed the poem and revised it amid religious scrutiny and personal turmoil.
Ottava rima: An Italian stanza of eight hendecasyllabic lines, usually rhyming ABABABCC. Tasso uses this stanza to sustain narration, speeches, and dramatic closure.
Godfrey of Bouillon: The historical leader of the First Crusade who became the poem’s principal Christian commander. Tasso makes Godfrey the unifying leader of the poem’s crusading army.
Tancred and Clorinda: A Christian knight and a Muslim warrior whose tragic encounter is one of the poem’s central episodes. Their combat reveals the cost of war through mutual recognition and irreversible violence.
The Faerie Queene: An English epic poem by Edmund Spenser, published in installments from 1590, that uses allegory and chivalric adventure. Spenser’s poem belongs to the later Renaissance epic world shaped partly by Tasso’s example.
First Crusade: A military expedition launched by Western European Christians that captured Jerusalem in 1099. The poem turns this campaign and its siege of Jerusalem into epic action.
Epic simile: An extended comparison in epic poetry that elaborates an image beyond the immediate action. The poem’s elevated battle narration draws on the expansive comparisons of classical epic.
Virgil: The Roman poet whose Aeneid became a central model for later European epic. Tasso adopts and reshapes Virgilian epic structures for a Christian subject.
Erminia: A Muslim princess in Tasso’s poem who loves Tancred and seeks refuge among shepherds. Her pastoral interlude offers a contrast to the poem’s battlefield and courtly worlds.
Jerusalem Delivered in music: Musical works inspired by Tasso’s poem, including operas, cantatas, and instrumental compositions. The poem’s dramatic episodes became adaptable subjects for composers across several centuries.

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The LusiadsCompared with: Tasso’s poem is a major Christian epic counterpart to Camões’s maritime imperial narrative.