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Tasso’s Homeric Counterfactuals

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The Homeric counterfactual—“and now x would have happened, had not y intervened”—is instantly recognizable as one of the most distinctive narrative techniques of the Iliad and Odyssey . Reading Tasso’s counterfactuals against those of the Iliad reveals that Tasso adapts this technique to argue for a greatly reduced divine presence in human affairs; even where the outlines of those affairs are divinely willed, human activity plays a decisive role in shaping history. In the space they make for human agency within a triumphant divine providence, they play a role in Tasso’s Counter-Reformation argument for the necessity of free will.
Title: Tasso’s Homeric Counterfactuals
Description:
The Homeric counterfactual—“and now x would have happened, had not y intervened”—is instantly recognizable as one of the most distinctive narrative techniques of the Iliad and Odyssey .
Reading Tasso’s counterfactuals against those of the Iliad reveals that Tasso adapts this technique to argue for a greatly reduced divine presence in human affairs; even where the outlines of those affairs are divinely willed, human activity plays a decisive role in shaping history.
In the space they make for human agency within a triumphant divine providence, they play a role in Tasso’s Counter-Reformation argument for the necessity of free will.

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