Utopia incognita: Tasso’s Atlantic and the Decolonial Imagination

Abstract

Set against the backdrop of the First Crusade’s conquest of Jerusalem, Torquato Tasso’s Gerusalemme liberata (1581) channels both the aspirations and the failures of city-building and destruction. The poem explores probing questions about territorial ownership, religious right, and the materiality of space, extending from the Middle East to its symbolic New World shores. Central to the article’s analysis is Canto XV, whose prophecy of Columbus and his distant voyage engages pre-, anti-, and decolonial modes of thought. This prophecy unfolds as two Crusaders approach the Atlantic island of the enchantress Armida, a space charged with imperial tensions. Although resembling an earthly paradise, Armida’s island functions as a paradise-prison, a heterotopia generating what the present study terms decolonizing doubts – critiques and counternarratives that arise when one colonial context is forced to assess another. These doubts unsettle the poem’s portrayals of conquest, liberation, captivity, and the epistemologies of discovery. Tasso’s emphasis on the verbal and visual proof of lands beyond known bounds exposes the anxieties surrounding both colonial and authorial power. By examining the interplay between utopian and decolonial perspectives, the present article brings into relief Tasso’s geographical critique of center and periphery, and foregrounds the pivotal role female artistry plays within epic history and its (im)possible future.