20 Facts About Emanuele Tesauro

Emanuele Tesauro is remembered chiefly for his seminal work Il cannocchiale aristotelico, the first and most important treatise on metaphor and conceit written in early modern Europe.

Emanuele Tesauro's father Alessandro was a noted diplomat, poet, and political figure, author of the didactic poem La sereide.

At the age of nineteen, Emanuele Tesauro entered the Jesuit order.

Emanuele Tesauro contributed eleven inscriptions to the celebrations which commemorated, at the behest of Pope Paul V, the beatification of Francis Xavier.

In 1626 Emanuele Tesauro moved to the Savoy court at Turin and became preacher to the duchess Cristina.

Emanuele Tesauro carried out diplomatic missions between Lombardy and Piedmont.

Emanuele Tesauro was ordained as Jesuit priest in 1627 at the insistence of Cardinal Maurizio di Savoia.

Emanuele Tesauro later tutored the future King of Sardinia Victor Amadeus II.

From 1669 to 1674 Emanuele Tesauro oversaw the publication of the various volumes of his Complete Works, including his own revised version of the Cannocchiale.

Emanuele Tesauro was buried in the chapel of his noble family in the Church of S Francesco in Fossano.

Emanuele Tesauro was a very prolific author: he wrote tragedies, sacred poems, historical works, including Del Regno d'Italia sotto i Barbari, and philosophical works, such as La filosofia morale, very widespread and appreciated.

Emanuele Tesauro formulated much of his Cannocchiale well before the date of publication, probably during the time he spent teaching rhetoric in Milan in the 1620s.

Right from the title, Il cannocchiale aristotelico, Emanuele Tesauro's work aims to revolutionize rhetoric and poetry in a way similar to what Galileo did in astronomy.

Emanuele Tesauro calls on Aristotle for his own uses, one might say, making the philosopher say things that in truth he never said.

Emanuele Tesauro defined metaphor as the "madre di tutte le argutezze" [mother of all wit], whose main aim is to generate "wonder in the reader", as well as to penetrate the variety of creation.

Emanuele Tesauro identifies three kinds of metaphor: the simple metaphor, the metaphysical proposition, and the metaphysical argument.

Emanuele Tesauro combines simple metaphor and allegory to propose eight further types: likeness, metonymy or synecdoche, punning, hypotyposis, hyperbole, laconism, opposition or antithesis, and deception.

Contrary to the Spanish term agudeza, which belongs solely to literary or political discourse, wit, according to Emanuele Tesauro, is not confined merely to language.

Emanuele Tesauro sees ingegno as "vestige of the Divine into the human".

Emanuele Tesauro served as an inspiration for the creation of Father Emanuele, one of the main characters of Umberto Eco's novel The Island of the Day Before.