This two-volume set is a contribution to the history of prudence in the Italian Renaissance as reflected in the work of the sixteenth-century poet, Torquato Tasso. Volume two contains a transcription of his notes to a contemporary philosophical treatise.

Torquato Tasso's treatment of prudence, a concept crucial to virtue-based ethics, is indicative of the several strands of his own philosophizing and of the variety of meanings attached to this concept during the early modern period in Italy.

The Prudence of Torquato Tasso sets out the various approaches to the prudential theme in Tasso's prose and poetry. It explores contemporary meanings of the term in metaphysics, theology, rhetoric, political theory, ethics and psychology; examines the connection with the philosophy professor, Francesco Piccolomini; and considers artistic theories of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries that may reflect either Tasso's direct influence or a common currency in ideas.

The study was completed in draft before the commemorative Italian publications associated with the quatercentennial celebration of Tasso's death. While this book now serves to amplify, interrogate and footnote in English some philosophical aspects of Tasso's writing, the second volume contains a complete transcript of Tasso's notes within the Piccolomini ethical text, De moribus, and thereby provides a contribution to the corpus of Tassonian postille.

This is the first of a two part work. This part contains Chapters 1-11 only.