47th Erasmus Lecture: Giuseppe Mazzotta, Tasso’s “Creation of the World” and the post-Tridentine Controversy on Images

In recognition of the importance of the Centre’s Erasmus Collection, each year a scholar of international reputation is invited to present a formal lecture at the CRRS. See a list of past Erasmus Lecturers.
Tasso’s “Creation of the World” and the post-Tridentine Controversy on Images

Abstract: Focusing on Tasso’s later cosmological poem, “Il mondo creato” (The Creation of the World), this paper explores Tasso’s response to the iconoclastic movement in the later part of the sixteenth century and to the defense of images in post-Tridentine circles. Written in the shadow of Michelangelo’s representations in the Sistine Chapel and the debates on man’s place in the cosmos, the poem shows Tasso’s sense of the limitations and consequences of the Renaissance idea of perspective. It ends with the poet’s suggestion of the necessity of weaving together esthetics and theology.

Professor Giuseppe Mazzotta is Sterling Professor in the Humanities for Italian at Yale University.  A renowned scholar of late medieval and Renaissance Italian literature, Professor Mazzotta has written on Dante, Petrarch, Boccaccio and Giambattista Vico in seven major monographs; his dozens of articles cover every century of Italian literary history.