La disperazione di giuda: suggestioni epico-cavalleresche in un poemetto di Giulio Liliano falsamente attribuito a Torquato Tasso

Abstract

In 1621, the Venetian bookseller Giacomo Scaglia had in his hands an anonymous copy of the manuscript by Giulio Liliani Impertinenza di Giuda in ottava rima, a poem of ninety stanzas which was printed in 1601; he erroneously attributed it to Torquato Tasso and as such had it published by Francesco Baba in 1627. The importance of a poem, which owes its wide diffusion to Tasso’s false paternity, is for us linked to the exceptional nature of a work entirely centered on the figure of Judas. The re-semanticisation of the New Testament character, disliked by the dogmatic intransigence of the Counter-Reformation to the point of being compared to Luther (Aretino, Sarpi), is accomplished by Liliani through the epic register. The episode of Judas who enters an aseptic forest devoid of geographical connotations, tormented by fury and remorse, is clearly constructed in a suggestive antithesis to the madness of the paladin Orlando, for whom a rehabilitation is envisaged which, on the contrary, will be denied to Judas.