Il sonno nella Gerusalemme liberata

The article examines, from different angles, the presence of sleep in Tasso’s Jerusalem Delivered, and illustrates the multiplicity of its significance. In Tasso’s poem, despite the rather formulaic use of the word «sonno» within the ottava rimas, its existential weight affects deeply the development of all the major characters, and infuses the poem with a distinctive atmosphere of both heroism and melancholy, with a sense of – at the same time– uncertainty, attraction to death, and striving toward a wider and shared condition of peace.