Tassoni, Alessandro

Tassoni, Alessandro (älĕs-sän`drō täs-sô`nē), 1565–1635, Italian poet. He spent much of his life in the service of Charles Emmanuel I of Savoy and Francesco I of Modena. His sharp letter (1602) of defense against accusations by the Italian Inquisition revealed him as a polemist of high order, as did his Manifesto (written 1627, pub. 1856), a bizarre and violent attack on the House of Savoy. Tassoni is best known for the mock-heroic poem Secchia rapita [the rape of the bucket] (1622), which ridicules the war between Bologna and Modena.

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Tassoni, Alessandro 

Born Sept. 28, 1565, in Modena; died there Apr. 25,1635. Italian poet.

Tassoni set forth his literary and aesthetic views in Remarks on Petrarch’s Poetry (1609) and in the last two books of his encyclopedic Diverse Thoughts (1608–20); in these works he rejected the classicistic Petrarchism of the 16th century. In his Philippics (1614–15) and Reply to Socinus (1617), Tassoni advocated national independence for Italy.

Tassoni’s most outstanding work was The Rape of the Bucket (written 1614–15, published 1622), which founded the genre of the heroicomic epic poem. The work satirized the feudal structure of a fragmented Italy.

WORKS

La secchia rapita: Rime e prose scelte. Edited by G. Ziccardi. [Turin, 1968.]
In Russian translation:
In Khrestomatiia po zapadno-evropeiskoi literature XVII veka, 2nd ed. Compiled by B. I. Purishev. Moscow, 1949.

REFERENCES

De Sanctis, F. Istoriia ital’ianskoi literatury, vol. 2. Moscow, 1964. (Translated from Italian.)
Artamonov, S. D., and R. M. Samarin. Istoriia zarubezhnoi literatury XVII veka, 2nd ed. Moscow, 1963.
Studi tassoniani. Modena, 1966.
Puliatti, P. Bibliografía di A. Tassoni, vols. 1–2. Florence, 1969–70.

R. I. KHLODOVSKII