«Alle Signore Principesse di Ferrara»: un canzoniere encomiastico di Torquato Tasso

Torquato Tasso’s manuscript F1, an autograph dedicated «alle Signore Principesse di Ferrara», testifies the author’s will to organise some of his lyrical texts into a cohesive book. This article argues that the poems collected in this manuscript can in fact be interpreted as a canzoniere, focused not on the topic of love, but rather on praising the Este family. Thus, it represents a unique case since it constantly refers to the environment of the court of Ferrara and to the relationship between Tasso and the duke Alfonso ii d’Este. This article first examines the disposition of the poems, which are arranged around a group of overtly encomiastic sonnets. The precise order of the texts contributes to create the structure of a canzoniere, with the support of other relevant elements, such as the dedicatory letter and various secondary topics. The analysis then focuses on the poems themselves, to highlight the use of particular rhetoric tropes and the multiple thematic recalls between the texts of the collection.