Emanuele Tesauro

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

Tesauro left a considerable mark in the history of 17th century Italian culture and politics. In politics – after he left the Society of Jesus in 1634 – as a firm supporter of the «principist» party and of the House of Carignano, and in a way as its ideologist, in culture, as a theorist of the baroque concept, as a prominent dramatist and rhetorician, as historian of the Piedmontese Civil War, and finally as an educator of princes: after being tutor to Prince Thomas' children, he was tutor to Victor Amadeus II, and on that occasion wrote his ''Filosofia morale'', which had many editions in the 18th century and, in its Russian translation, contributed Paul I's education.

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. Provided by Wikipedia