Montaigne and Tasso

By Sarah Bakewell In 1580, two great writers met in Ferrara, in Italy. It should have been a wonderful moment: Italy's greatest contemporary poet, Torquato Tasso, author of the epic La Gerusalemma liberata, or Jerusalem Delivered, came face to face with France's first and greatest literary essayist, Michel de Montaigne. What a conversation they could [...]