TASSONI, ALESSANDRO. — Poet, born in Modena on 21 Sept. 1595, died there on 12 Sept. 1635.
After studying in Bologna and Ferrara, he went to Rome in 1597 and remained there for some time, wholly devoted to his literary labours. It was during these years that he wrote the *Considerazioni sopra le Rime del Petrarca*, not out of «ill-will towards Petrarch and lyric poets», but against the «stupid» worshippers of the latter. In 1606 he was «prince» of the «Umoristi»; he was also a member of the Lincei and the Crusca. When Charles Emmanuel I of Savoy waged war against Spain, Tassoni supported the enterprise with two *Filippiche* against the Spaniards (1615), which are the most noble and vigorous oratorical prose of the 17th century. In 1618 the Duke appointed him secretary of the Piedmontese embassy in Rome and gentleman-in-waiting to his son, Cardinal Maurice; in 1619 he summoned him to Turin as his first secretary; in 1621 he sent him as companion to Maurice, who was in Rome for the conclave. Meanwhile he had composed *La Secchia rapita* (1615), in 10 cantos, which he could only publish in 1624, in 12 cantos. In 1620 he published *Pensieri diversi*, in 10 books. In 1626 he accepted service with Cardinal Ludovisi, and after the latter’s death (1632) he was invited by Duke Francis I to the court of Modena, where he spent the remainder of his days.
In the *Pensieri diversi* (natural, moral, civil, historical, literary) there lives a combative and eccentric spirit, acute and paradoxical, opposing reason to tradition, hostile to unexamined ideas and the authority of the «ancients», revealing new truths, though not without curious prejudices. *La Secchia rapita* is the masterpiece of Italian heroicomic poetry. Tassoni wished to parody the heroic epic, which the epigones of Tasso were abusing, and which contrasted with the wretched social and political reality of his time: and he succeeded in creating a felicitous poem, a fluent and swift narrative, where, with lively shifts of tone, with «laughter that falls unexpectedly amid serious matters», he moves with ease from the serious to the burlesque and the grotesque. That the characters in general are not deeply drawn, that they are masks and caricatures rather than characters, matters little: for they suffice to colour the parody of a poetic fashion and the satire of an age that was inept and servile. Nevertheless, considerable prominence is given to the Count of Culagna, the noble braggart and coward whom Tassoni presents as the nephew of «don Chisotto», and to Titta di Cola, the Roman plebeian who has made good, a swaggering boaster and liar, a kind of Rugantino. Nor is the realistic portrayal of the whole of Tuscany with its peasants and citizens, armed in the strangest guise and speaking the most heterogeneous dialects, less felicitous.