Dimorare con le voci degli antichi. La biblioteca nel Malpiglio secondo di Torquato Tasso

Abstract

In the dialogue Il Malpiglio secondo overo del fuggir la moltitudine, Tasso stages the dialogue between Forestiero Napolitano and Giovanlorenzo Malpiglio, son of Vincenzo Malpiglio, a gentleman of the court of Ferrara. The dialogue focuses on the function of the oratories, poets and of philosophers. The library of the young Malpiglio, located at the highest point of the house, in the most central place of the city, in fact it is not only the emblematic space of the identity recognition of the courteous gentleman and of his erudite education; it becomes the space of an uninterrupted dialogue with the voices of the authors, with which the reader entertains himself, appreciating order and vagueness and immersing himself in the passions and sensations they arouse. In this way, the library is not a particular variation of locus amoenus, source for the wise tranquility of the soul; on the contrary, in it the reader, overwhelmed by controversies and conflicts of thought, involved in the confrontation with the other, lives the passions of heroes and heroines, each time undertaking a new journey to unknown lands. Reading, then, is no longer an idle recovery of peace and quiet, but research and desire to experience a multiplicity of experiences, to dialogue with a multitude of voices, to mobilize thought following the imagination which, as we read in the Malpiglio, is 'internal sense'.