My chickens, they've been pwned!

[larryhammer]

Things I've learned from Fairfax's translation of Tasso's Jerusalem Delivered:

• A really good poet can make even Tancred look like a decent guy.


• Despite all the opportunities for slashy male comradeship you'd expect in a war epic, Tasso's more into femslash (see especially vi.79).


• If you disguise yourself in your roomie's armor, people expect you to fight like her. Who knew?


• Christianity good; all things pagan bad. He's just sayin'.


• Who needs Marlowe's mighty lines when you can get smoothly pointed meters like this?


• Temptations are more interesting than battles. Especially repetitious battles with predestined ends.


• No fashionable warrior woman should be without several sets of armor, including a jet black number accessorized for night-time assaults.


• Fairfax would have adored a thesaurus. "And sweet-breath'd Zephyr on his spreading wings / Sleep, ease, repose, rest, peace and quiet brings" (xiv.1.7-8) is all too typical.


• When you have a totally cool concept like a spring that's the underground source of all the rivers in the world, you don't need to dress up the cave walls with glittering precious gems. In fact, you're better off without the distracting decorations. I'd call it "gilding the lily" except there's real gilding but no lilly.


• It's impossible to read lines like "... his broad shield, wherein displayéd flies / The bird that proves her chickens for her own / By looking 'gainst the sun with open eyes" (viii.49.2-4) without cracking up. My medieval beast-lore isn't strong, but I think the bird is an eagle, which makes the chickens even funnier. Yes, I know, chicken means chicks, but still.

I won't, as for The Faerie Queene, compile a list of the naughty bits because Tasso was writing for Counter-Reformation -- aside from what I've already quoted, the only naughty bits are a scene of two bathing maidens that Spenser improved when he stole it. Sad, really. And, yes, I managed to finish it anyway.

---L.

Comments

[angevin2.livejournal.com]

This is great! Are you going to do one for Civil Wars when you finish it? Which of course requires me to finish transcribing it. I had better get my bum in gear; only two books left.

There are not really any naughty bits in The Civil Wars either. At least, there aren't any bits that are MEANT to be naughty. There are some bits that SOUND naughty accidentally...

[movingfinger.livejournal.com]

Christianity good; all things pagan bad. He's just sayin'.

Yes and no. It depends on the paganism. He's so deep in Classical mythology he can't get from point A to point B without a Greco-Roman digression.

Armida is part of the proof that evil is more interesting than good, a problem that modern genre fantasies descended from Tasso have yet to solve...

[larryhammer]

I have trouble believing that any Elizabethan poet would be only accidentally naughty-sounding. Though Daniel would be the most likely to refrain from naughtiness, if it comes to that.

I suspect I can't make better snark on The Civil Wars than you've been. But, yes, I have been waiting for the rest of it, he said hopefully. And would even promise commentary when you do.

---L.

[larryhammer]

My understanding is that Fairfax added most of the classical mythologizing; and certainly Esolan's version has a lot less of it. Tasso's is a lot more uneasy about the classical gods than even, say, Camoes -- whose Counter-Reformation solution was actually quite clever (include the gods as actors, but never let their actions affect anything -- they're pure window-dressing).

Yes, about Armida. As a temptation, she's marvelous. I suppose I ought to include her topless sunbathing as a naughty bit.

---L.

[klwilliams.livejournal.com]

If you disguise yourself in your roomie's armor, people expect you to fight like her. Who knew?

I did. I've seen this happen a lot in the SCA. :-)

[larryhammer]

:-P

---L.