The Agency of Gender in Jerusalem Delivered

The Agency of Gender in Jerusalem Delivered <Tab/>Throughout the text of Jerusalem Delivered, Torquato Tasso makes a noticeable departure from the pre-existing structure of the epic, namely, he allows the masculine and feminine traits of his characters to overlap between the genders. In this poem the reader is confronted with women who act nobly, fight in battle, and strategize like men in the service of their countries and gods, as …

…to passion, the physical, and the present. Within this epic romance, the most noble characters are those who embody a combination of these virtues. Tasso moves away from the Virgilian epic hero who must leave the women who love them on the shores and abandon his pity in the underworld. Just as his poem is a combination of epic and romance, Tasso creates an ideal identity which possesses a combination of male and female virtues.