Rinaldo

"Wickert's magnificent translation -- the first in ottava rima verse -- finally allows the Rinaldo to take its place in the English-speaking world alongside Boiardo's Orlando Innamorato, Ariosto's Orlando Furioso, and Tasso's own Gerusalemme Liberata. First-time readers will be surprised and delighted by this account of young Rinaldo's romance adventures under the sway of love and desire for glory, written when Tasso was himself just a teenager." -- Jo Ann Cavallo, Professor & Chair, Columbia University Department of Italian

"Max Wickert's The Liberation of Jerusalem is a splendid English version of Tasso's masterpiece. It manages to keep the rhymed octave form going in a fluid readable way -- itself a remarkable accomplishment -- while staying very close to the original. And it handles the big moments (Clorinda's death, Solimano's view of the world, Armida's arias) with wonderful sureness and power. I admire this translation, and I trust that it will catch on and be the standard one for years to come." - David Quint, Sterling Professor of English and Chair of Comparative Literature (Yale University)

"Wickert's is a remarkable achievement....The translation is consistently faithful to almost every detail of the content [and] successfully recreates much of the distinctive structure of Tasso's language and its complex interrelation with the metre." -- David Robie, Times Literary Supplement

"Wickert's fine translation captures both the dignity and the energy of Tasso's epic, its artfulness and its passion." -- Carl Dennis, Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, 2002

"I would have guessed from Max Wickert's sonnets that his handling of ottava rima would be strong and fluent. As indeed it is. I can't imagine a translation reading any better: everywhere easy, natural, idiomatic, taking the demanding rhyme scheme with no strain at all. A great 'read.'" -- John Frederic Nims, former Editor, Poetry (Chicago)