AMINTA. The uncontested pre-eminence of the of Tasso in the field of pas toral drama is due to the unusual manner in which the technical problems of the genre are solved. The stock objection to the pastoral as a whole is its artificiality, its failure to correspond to life — its violation, in a word, of the Aristo telian canon of °probability.° Interpreting the (Aminta) in the light of Tasso's 'Dialogues on Poetry,' it is apparent that he intended to evade this criticism in the typically pedantic fashion of the Renaissance: Aminta is of divine descent, and Silvia, his lover and future bride, is a nymph of Diana. In a world of divinities even the aesthetic shepherds of the pastoral are °probable') as well as possible. If we hold that this evasion is as futile as the objection itself, it is nevertheless clear that Tasso's poetic in stinct served him better than his logic. The reality that fails to return through the divinity of his characters does arise from the atmos• phere of humorous fancy into which the whole invention is thrown. A playfully mechanical plot — with two resurrections and a bloodless combat—continued in its lighter effects by character drawings humanly conventional (the philosophical spinster and the vanquished Diana), compensates by its gentle mirth for the absurdities inherent in the nature of the Arca dian world. It is only in the realm of fancy that the impossible becomes probable and neces sary. And when this has been conceded, Tasso
is free with all sincerity to yield his spirit to the voluptuous melancholy, the suppressed joys, the mellow anguish of sensuous passions experi enced in an imagination aspiring to the ideal. This idealized sensuousness of the pustained by imagery free from crudeness but brilliantly visualized, enriched by suggestions of sadness and unsatisfied yearnings, pricking the intellect with paradox and metaphor and the memory with a wealth of erudite allusion, gave new direction to Italian Petrarchism gen erally and to the moods of pastoral poetry in particular. In the (Aminta,' as well as in the 'Jerusalem Delivered,) the Marinists of the 17th century found the principal authority for their °lasciviousness.° It was the delight of the precieux salons of Paris under Louis XIII and Louis XIV. Twenty-eight French trans lations have been made of this work. Of a dozen English renderings the first, by Abraham Faunce, appeared in 1591, and the best, by Leigh Hunt, in 1820. The (Aminta) was com posed as an entertainment for Giambattista Pigna, Prime Minister of Duke Alfonso of Ferrara, and produced for the first time at Belvedere-on-the-Po, Pigna's country estate, 31 July 1571.