The Portable Petrarch

by Francesco Petrarca, Mark Musa (Editor)

Varied and imaginative in their use of poetic forms, the 366 love poems that make up Petrarchs "Canzoniere" are simple in their aim: to glorify the poets muse, Laura. But more than an expression of devotion, they planted the seeds of the Renaissance and influenced all lyric poetry that followed, including the work of Chaucer, Spenser, and Shakespeare. Meditating on his beloved and the gap between them, both during her life and after her death, Petrarch focuses internally and infuses his earthly love with the sacred love of the Virgin Mary. Combining spiritual and personal introspection, Petrarch intermingles the supernatural with the personal in a truly revolutionary and illuminating collection of poems.

Genres: Poetry, Classics, Renaissance, Philosophy, Medieval, Italy

592 pages, Paperback

First published June 1, 2004

About the author

Famous Italian poet, scholar, and humanist Francesco Petrarca, known in English as Petrarch, collected love lyrics in Canzoniere .

People often call Petrarch the earliest Renaissance "father of humanism". Based on Petrarch's works, and to a lesser extent those of Dante Alighieri and Giovanni Boccaccio, Pietro Bembo in the 16th century created the model for the modern Italian language, which the Accademia della Crusca later endorsed. People credit Petrarch with developing the sonnet. They admired and imitated his sonnets, a model for lyrical poems throughout Europe during the Renaissance. Petrarch called the Middle Ages the Dark Ages.

Reviews

[Sharon · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read selections of Petrarch as part of my freshman survey of western literature. I really slogged through all the religious-themed texts.