"When Despotism kept genius in chains": Imagining Tasso's Madness and Imprisonment, 1748-1849.

The article offers criticism on the 1817 poem "The Lament of Tasso" by George Byron, focusing on the role of the biography of 16th-century Italian poet Torquato Tasso in English literature. The author discusses biographies of Tasso by authors including Henry Layng and Giovan Battista Manso and focuses on the depiction of Tasso's imprisonment and madness in Byron's poem and in works by other authors such as Henrietta Prescott and Percy Bysshe Shelley.