Petrarch was one of the founding fathers of Renaissance humanism, yet the nature and significance of his ideas are still widely debated. In this book, Gur Zak examines two central issues in ...Petrarch's works - his humanist philosophy and his concept of the self. Zak argues that both are defined by Petrarch's idea of care for the self. Overcome by a strong sense of fragmentation, Petrarch turned to the ancient idea that philosophy can bring harmony and wholeness to the soul through the use of spiritual exercises in the form of writing. Examining his vernacular poetry and his Latin works from both literary and historical perspectives, Zak explores Petrarch's attempts to use writing as a spiritual exercise, how his spiritual techniques absorbed and transformed ancient and medieval traditions of writing, and the tensions that arose from his efforts to care for the self through writing.
From the thirteenth to the fifteenth centuries, viral contagions, such as the Black Death of 1348, disrupted many social, political, and economic parts of life, situating the idea and the reality of ...Death in mass numbers at the forefront of late medieval and early Renaissance minds. Responding to the anxieties experienced by the thousands, literary and visual texts from this period emphasized the personification of Death as an imposing figure and common threat. This paper traces the visual evolution of the figure of Death which, I argue, developed according to intertextual and intervisual dialogues among Francesco Petrarca’s Triumphus Mortis, Giovanni Boccaccio’s L’Amorosa visione, and the fresco known as the Triumph of Death by Buonamico Buffalmacco in the Pisa Camposanto. While early visual portrayals of Petrarch’s Triumphus Mortis attest to the renewed interest in the “Triumph of Death” in the decades immediately following the 1358 plague, most artists depict a chariot atop which Death rides during a “triumphal” procession, painted elements that are not explicitly recounted in Petrarch’s text. I investigate the reasons for this cross-contamination between word and image around the “Triumph of Death,” demonstrating further how Boccaccio’s engagement with funerary rituals informed his Amorosa visione, as well as his viewing of the Pisa Camposanto. The fusion of live-action pageantry with the visual “Triumph of Death” provided Petrarch with an intermedial model for his Triumphus Mortis, to which later artists turned for inspiration in depicting figures within and beyond the poet’s Trionfi. Such intermedial dialogues across art and poetry resonated with audiences striving to overcome the indiscriminate nature of Death and the fear of disease during a most unsettling historical moment.
Writing Beloveds considers the way in which a poetic convention, the 'beloved' to whom Renaissance amatory poetry was addressed, becomes influential political rhetoric, an instrument that both men ...and women used to shape and justify their claims to power.
Rocco Rubini. Posterity: Inventing Tradition from Petrarch to Gramsci (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2022), doi.org/10.7208/ chicago/9780226807720.001.0001, xiv+342 pages
WithVida u Obra de Petrarca, Dr. Francisco Rico questions whether the traditional biography of Petrarch is a product of the real life of the author, or from the critical understanding of his work. In ...this volume, he analyzes the environment and periodization of theSecretum, relocating its date of publication. It has long been assumed that theSecretum--composed of three dialogues in which "Augustine," in the presence of "Truth" tries to persuade "Francis" to seek spiritual perfection--reflects a spiritual crisis on the part of the author. This is the supposition that Dr. Rico calls into question. This comprehensive, Spanish-language study opens the way for a more realistic interpretation of both the works and motivations of Petrarch.
FFrancesco Petrarca (1304-1374) contribuyó de manera decisiva a la creación del concepto historiográfico de Edad Media, y a la consideración despectiva de estos siglos de la historia, en gran parte ...debido a su identificación con autores clásicos como Ennio, Cicerón y Tito Livio. El presente artículo centra la atención en las concepciones historiográficas que Petrarca revela en el poema en hexámetros titulado Africa, una obra insuficientemente estudiada pero que se revela fundamental a la hora de comprender tanto las tesis historiográficas del poeta toscano como la creación conceptual de la Edad Media oscura.
Afterword Petrarca, Francesco
Journal of early modern studies,
03/2022, Letnik:
11
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
In at least two letters to Giovanni Boccaccio, Francesco Petrarca raised the issue of imitation and, more generally, of the way in which writers should manage their relationship with tradition. One ...such letter, from October 1359, is presented in an English translation by Aldo S. Bernardo.
Journey to Italy by Marquis de Sade Donato, Clorinda
Eighteenth - Century Studies,
03/2023, Letnik:
56, Številka:
3
Journal Article, Book Review
Recenzirano
...the travel account—combined with the author's painstaking postediting which included additions, directives to a future publisher about possible titles for the work, lists of days traveled, post ...stops, and expenses incurred—makes this journey unique among the many "voyages en Italie" produced by grand tourists in the eighteenth century. Sade clearly strove to elevate the travel account genre to include historical and moral reflections on Italian customs and institutions in the interest of reforming them, to which his proposed addition to the travel account, "Project for a Reform in Italy," attests. ...Sade, the Frenchman, followed in the distinguished footsteps of the members of his sixteenth-century compatriots Joachim Du Bellay and Pierre Ronsard. ...Sade feels overwhelmed by the naturalness of Italian excess, which contrasts sharply with the artificially planned and calculated excess of his own plots and desires.
Drawing upon poststructuralist theories of nationalism and national identity developed by such writers as Etienne Balibar, Emmanuel Levinas, Julia Kristeva, Antonio Negri, and Slavoj Zizek, noted ...Renaissance scholar William J. Kennedy argues that the Petrarchan sonnet serves as a site for early modern expressions of national sentiment in Italy, France, England, Spain, and Germany. Kennedy pursues this argument through historical research into Renaissance commentaries on Petrarch's poetry and critical studies of such poets as Lorenzo de' Medici, Joachim du Bellay and the Pléiade brigade, Philip and Mary Sidney, and Mary Wroth.
Kennedy begins with a survey of Petrarch's poetry and its citation in Italy, explaining how major commentators tried to present Petrarch as a spokesperson for competing versions of national identity. He then shows how Petrarch's model helped define social class, political power, and national identity in mid-sixteenth-century France, particularly in the nationalistic sonnet cycles of Joachim Du Bellay. Finally, Kennedy discusses how Philip Sidney and his sister Mary and niece Mary Wroth reworked Petrarch's model to secure their family's involvement in forging a national policy under Elizabeth I and James I .
Treating the subject of early modern national expression from a broad comparative perspective, The Site of Petrarchism will be of interest to scholars of late medieval and early modern literature in Europe, historians of culture, and critical theorists.
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