Abstract

The essay proposes a new review of the figures and personifications of Jealousy in Torquato Tasso’s definitive collection of love poems, the Mantuan Osanna edition (1591). Firstly, it points out the formal and structural connections which relate a handful of sonnets to the well-known Cura, che di timor ti nutri e cresci, by Giovanni Della Casa. Then, it focuses on the multiform representations of the feeling according to a series of poems placed in the second part of the book (CV-CLXXX), in praise of a woman named Laura, especially by investigating the friction of this main theme with the prevalent idea of a sublime and spiritualized love.