Gli spazi della poesia tra teologi e Incogniti. Su alcuni lettori seicenteschi della «Gerusalemme liberata»: Matteo Ferchio, Carlo Pona, Marcantonio Nali, Paolo Abriani

The Spaces of Poetry between Theologians and the Incogniti. A few Seventeenth-Century Readers of Jerusalem Delivered : Matteo Ferchio, Carlo Pona, Marco Antonio Nali and Paolo Abriani · In 1642, the publication of Franciscan theologian Matteo Ferchio’s Osservazioni on Torquato Tasso’s Jerusalem Delivered triggered a lively debate among a few writers of the time, notably Carlo Pona, Marcantonio Nali, and Paolo Abriani. Almost all of these authors had a solid theological background and almost all of them belonged to the Venetian Academy of the Incogniti ; yet, despite their common background, their little controversy testifies to an interesting multiplicity of views and attitudes regarding not only Tasso’s poem in itself, but also the meaning of literature as such in a time of great change in European cultural history. These writers’ texts, in fact, question the use of classical mythology in literary works as well as the relationship of such works to the notions of true and false, docere and delectare.