Emanuele Tesauro

Emanuele Tesauro
Portrait of Emanuele Tesauro by Charles Dauphin (1670)
Born(1592-01-28)January 28, 1592
DiedFebruary 26, 1675(1675-02-26) (aged 83)
Turin, Duchy of Savoy
Occupations
  • Rhetorician
  • Dramatist
  • Poet
  • Historian
  • Literary critic
Education
EducationJesuit Brera College (Milan)
Collegium Maximum (Naples) (D.D., 1628)
Philosophical work
Era17th-century philosophy
Region
School
Notable studentsFrancesco Fulvio Frugoni
Main interestsAesthetics, poetics, historiography, literary theory, ethics, poetry, rhetoric
Notable works
  • Il cannocchiale aristotelico
  • La filosofia morale
Ecclesiastical career
ReligionChristianity
ChurchCatholic Church
OrdainedOctober 1627

Emanuele Tesauro COSML (Italian: [emanuˈɛːle teˈzauro]; 28 January 1592 – 26 February 1675) was an Italian philosopher, rhetorician, literary theorist, dramatist, Marinist poet, and historian.

Tesauro is remembered chiefly for his seminal work Il cannocchiale aristotelico (The Aristotelian Telescope), the first and most important treatise on metaphor and conceit written in early modern Europe. Tesauro's Cannocchiale aristotelico has been called "one of the most important statements of poetics in seventeenth-century Europe", and "a milestone in the history of aesthetics". In Umberto Eco's The Island of the Day Before, Tesauro's theories are self-consciously taken up, through the character Padre Emanuele and his metaphor-machine.