Renaissance Misogyny and the Rejection of Petrarch

This chapter traces the origin of the rejection of Petrarch and misogyny during the Renaissance period. It investigates some aspects of a reaction against the Petrarchan poetic clichés among Italian writers with some reference to a few English Elizabethan texts. It shows a model which depicts how an idealised view of one woman can be used to create a negative, basically chaotic, and even scurrilous image, in a period in which parody and mocking texts abound.

Petrarch and Cino da Pistoia: A Moment in the Pre-history of the Canzoniere

This chapter examines the influence of Italian poet Cino da Pistoia on Petrarch's Canzoniere. It traces the emergence of the distinct tone of Petrarchan lyric from the dolce stil novo through the important filter of Cino da Pistoia. It suggests that the consonances between Cino da Pistoia's lyrics and Petrarch's may explain that warm homage to Cino at his death in Canzoniere 92 where Petrarch deliberately copied Cino's manner.

Petrarch solitarius

This chapter examines Petrarch's view on the solitary life based on his De Vita Solitaria. It explores the tensions behind the Petrarch's praise of the solitary life, notably the criticisms of it voiced by Augustinus in the Secretum. It explains that this opposition is left unresolved and what is left is a more complex picture of the humanist's self-portrayal as solitarius. It presents a poem from the second part of the Canzoniere which can be read as a subversion or as a sort of complement mirror image of all that is said in the De Vita Solitaria.

Between Tradition and Transgression: Amelia Rosselli’s Petrarch

This chapter examines the influence of Petrarch on the poetry of Amelia Rosselli. It argues that Rosselli's poetry can be seen to reaffirm the enduring value of the Petrarchan legacy at the close of the second millennium and shows how Petrarchan discourse operates within her poetry as a veritable ghost in the machine. It suggests of Rosselli's three major books, Serie ospedaliera appears to be the one in which the dialogue with Petrarch is more explicitly and productively engaged.

Leopardi and Petrarch

This chapter examines Giacomo Leopardi's own imitation of Petrarch. It describes Leopardi's major engagement with Petrarch including his commentary on the Canzoniere and explains the similarities and differences between his All sua donna and Petrarch's Chiare, fresche e dolci acque. It suggests that the most striking similarity between the two poets is that they both are concerned with illusions without self-delusion.

Petrarch’s Second (and Third) Death

This chapter examines the concept of the solitary Petrarch and suggests that Petrarch's theory of secular fame and the various stages of death, fame, time, and eternity are already present in nuce in the early Latin elegy on his mother's death. It highlights the influence of Dante's Inferno in Petrarch's development of an iterative mortality/vitality related to memory early in his career and on his Metrica on the death of his mother.

Introduction

This introductory chapter explains the coverage of this book, which is about British academics and critics' reflections on Italian poet Petrarch and his legacy in British culture. This book explores Petrarch's humanism and examines the ways Petrarch interacted with some of his major sources in both key Latin works and in the vernacular poetry. It discusses Petrarch's poetic legacy in the Renaissance in Italy and Great Britain and investigates how Petrarch's legacy was taken up in Britain, from the time of the first Petrarchists to the early seventeenth century after the Union of the Crowns.

Translating Petrarch

This chapter examines the translations of Petrarch's poetry in English. It discusses different translations of Petrarch from the early Renaissance period to the twentieth century including the works of Sir Thomas Wyatt, the Earl of Surrey and Robert M. Durling. It also describes the author's own translation and explains the rationale and problems behind his own version and situates these within the broader context of the British preference for the more ‘concrete’ poetry of Dante, Michelangelo and Montale.

Nineteenth-century British Biographies of Petrarch

This chapter documents the extraordinary enthusiasm for biographies of Petrarch in Great Britain in the three-quarters of a century between 1775 and 1850. It explains that during the late eighteenth century Petrarch was more popular than Dante in Britain but Dante soon eclipsed his successor after the rise of Romanticism. It considers works on Petrarch including those of Ugo Foscolo and Walter Savage Landor and suggests some reasons why Petrarch's popularity died out in Britain so suddenly and so radically in the second half of the nineteenth century.

Sidney, Spenser, and Political Petrarchism

This chapter examines traces of Petrarchism in English poets Edmund Spenser and Sir Philip Sydney. It argues that the engagements of both poets with Petrarchism are more serious, and indeed more political, than traditional readings have implied. It explains that these two poets share Petrarch's condemnation of desire but do not display their contemptus mundi. It also discusses Spenser's recognition of the Petrarch's authority as a model for creating a sense of nationhood in thrall to a monarch and his use of this model to create a counter-national poetry whose authority is independent of political power.