i seem to find myself responsible not for tasso but for camoens for my spenser's continental sources class. i haven't even got hold of the text; i doubt anyone in class has either. most people want to write on tasso or boiardo and ariosto, but, without even having read the camoens, i'm starting to think that that is going to be more within my interests - if they can be called interests - even in an amateurish way. i think that it could be combined with my inherited nohrnberg argument (about the connection between dante, tasso, the odyssey, and two poems of tennyson: "columbus" and "ulysses") to make a rather neat topic of exploration - and both navigation and colonial history in the east indies are of some historical significance to me - to our part of the world. i do have to get hold of the richard fanshawe 17th-century translation of the lusiad though - so i suspect i'll have to print it out from eebo instead and have it bound. it'll also be rather fun to read vasco da gama's own account of his circumnavigation of africa i think - how clever about the winds.