Tasso e gli alienisti. Un excursus ottocentesco

Abstract

This paper reconstructs the nineteenth-century pathographic reception of Torquato Tasso, whose figure became a privileged arena for the interplay between erudite-documentary and medico-anthropological approaches. Tasso’s life was subjected to clinical scrutiny, as physicians – pursuing diagnostic aims – read his texts and documents for precise symptoms of psychological suffering. In the final decades of the century, it was above all Lombroso and his school who pushed this discourse to its extreme consequences, interpreting Tasso through the lens of the degenerative theory of genius. A critical examination of this body of writings invites reflection on its deeper motivations, which are not always incomprehensible or illegitimate.