SOURCE: Burwick, Frederick. “Goethe's Classicism: The Paradox of Irrationality in Torquato Tasso.” In A Reassessment of Weimar Classicism, edited by Gerhart Hoffmeister, pp. 11-33. Lewiston, N.Y.: The Edwin Mellen Press, 1996.

In the following essay, Burwick explores Goethe's utilization of dramatic tension between the rational and the irrational in Torquato Tasso.

It is quite likely that when Goethe first conceived the idea of dramatizing the conditions of madness tormenting the life of the poet, Torquato Tasso, he had in mind a very different sort of play than the one which he finally completed a decade later. However different the results may have been, from first to last it was the paradoxicality of the poet's own poetic vision that provoked Goethe's fascination. Tasso, in 1580, was caught up in a dilemma of poetic representation that was all too familiar to Goethe when he commenced his play in 1780. Tasso's La Gerusalemme...