부산대학교 도서관

Readers and critics alike of Tasso's Gerusalemme liberata (1581) have long been drawn to the figure of Erminia. Her love for the Christian hero Tancredi drives her into multiple misadventures ranging from a military disguise to a pastoral interlude to a well-timed battlefield healing. Integral to the Christian army's success in the Crusade, she nevertheless remains unconverted, leaving her outside the fold she has served so loyally. Critics have traditionally read her as a figure for the genre of romance, anathema to the poem's epic unity. This article suggests that Erminia is more epic than critics have previously claimed; although she engages with traditional romance elements, she does so in pursuit of an epic goal. Erminia embodies the marriage of romance and epic throughout the poem, holding both in tension without being subsumed into either category. Moreover, because Erminia is not fully epic, she is able to desire epic, thereby marking epic's value from within the poem. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]