Tasso, Ariosto e le "picciole vittorie". Gli scacchi, la poesia, la filosofia della storia

Corrado Confalonieri

2024-01-01

---

Abstract

Recent scholarship has read in Torquato Tasso’s Gonzaga secondo overo del giouco an oblique treatment of themes not related to play. Partially in line with these studies, the article proposes a meta-theoretical reading of the observations that Tasso dedicates to chess in his dialogue on games. What enables such ‘double reading’ is intertextuality: an Ariosto quote noted by commentators but so far never utilized in interpretation offers a clue to the possibility of unveiling a meta-theoretical level beneath the theory of chess, thus shedding new light on the relationship between poetry and history.