Resumen de Impero, giardini, sepolcri : ridimensionamenti spazio-temporali nella Gerusalemme liberata di Torquato Tasso
Following the convention of the epic genre, time and space of the world presented in Gerusalemme liberata (ed. 1581) by T. Tasso play an important role in communicating moral and ideological messages contained in that work. Complex descriptions of places that have undergone destructive or repairing activity of the time constitute one of the means through which the poet expresses existential and epistemological anxieties due to the sixteenth-century collapse of the traditional view of the world. The analysis of spatiotemporal dependencies in the Tassian epic is preceded by a short introduction showing the three main concepts of time present in the culture of the Reinassance (i.e. the linear time, the cyclic time, and the infinity) and the corresponding spaces (cislunar, cosmos, and the beyond). One will find all of the abovementioned concepts of time and all of the abovementioned approaches to space in the epic universe of Tasso. The paper analyses fragments of the epic where the same place is described from different spatial or temporal perspectives. Such descriptions of places varying according to the viewpoint (e.g. an ocean seen from the outer space seems to be a pond) and varying in time (e.g. a garden turns into a desert) are distinct examples of poetics developing after the Council of Trident: poetics that utilise images saturated with sensuality to communicate worthlessness of such "earthly" values as corporal beauty, power or fame.
