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.
The author explains on xxv–xxvi how, in consultation with the board of The I Tatti Renaissance Library, she developed the plan of arranging the letters not chronologically but grouped under nine ...headings, such as “On His Letters” or “His Life and His World.” The event also had a tragicomic sequel when the large tome that Petrarch copied out by hand from the archetype and kept at the doorpost of his library repeatedly fell on him in such a way that he finally had to seek medical treatment (III 15.16–20). In these pages, we find not only Petrarch the zealous book collector and student of ancient texts, but also many interesting details about Petrarch the man, including the correspondence relating to his appointment to, and acceptance of, the poet laureateship (III 2–6) and his comments on topics of the times, such as the Black Death or the state of the Church and the papacy and his desire to see the latter return to Rome from Avignon (“the Babylon of the West,” as he called it).
What was John Lydgate, a Benedictine monk and author of orthodox religious poems, doing translating pagan histories like the Troy Book and Siege of Thebes^ In his late autobiographical poem the ...'Testament of Dan John Lydgate', Lydgate explores whether Christian practice was compatible with humanist reading of classical or pagan texts.1 He does this by engaging with Augustine's Confessions and Petrarch's Secretum, taking some of each writer's approach to reading and memory in order to justify ways in which it was acceptable to read classical or pagan literature. In the 'Testament' he applies Augustine's theory of memory in an unorthodox Petrarchan way in order to establish his own active reading approach and explain the value in humanist texts. 1. Augustines "Confessions' Augustine's 'influence on the literature of the Middle Ages is pervasive' and there was an Augustinian revival' in the later Middle Ages.6 Lydgate had access to the Confessions, amongst many other Augustine texts, in Bury St Edmunds abbey library, Duke Humfrey's collection, and probably in numerous other places.7 The most obvious allusion to the text in the 'Testament' is Lydgate's description of stealing apples and grapes as a child (lines 638-40), considered an allusion to Augustine's theft of pears (Il.iv).8 Whilst the allusion is undoubted, it merits greater caution. Nisse thinks this significant because it was the age that St Edmund died; but it is also likely a reference to the frequent plagues that hit East Anglia and perhaps to a specific incident in Lydgate's life.12 Lydgate imitates Augustine in stating that some texts are more valid to read than others, and in regretting his childhood reading tastes.
This is the first complete edition of an anonymous late medieval Catalan translation of Italian writer Bernardo Illicino's commentary on Petrarch'sTriumphs. Although the translation of Illicino's ...commentary is considered a classic of Catalan prose by scholars, until now, no one has undertaken the task of preparing a complete edition because of the complexity of the prose, and because the original manuscript survives in two pieces in two different libraries: the National Library of France in Paris and the Ateneu in Barcelona. The original document, reproduced here, represented the first attempt to introduce Petrarch'sTriumphsto Peninsular readers and constituted an essential document for the study of the introduction and development of Iberian Petrarchism. This translation of theTriumphsis different from later renditions by the order and content of its chapters.The introduction to this volume raises interesting questions about the translation's nature and about the readers for which it was intended, while underscoring the fact that Italian Humanism was introduced in the Iberian Peninsula through the Catalan-speaking intellectuals in the Aragonese Crown. Written in Spanish with Petrach's verses preserved in the original Italian.
The fixed poetic forms of Petrarch’s Canzoniere and the poetical works of the Petrarchist poets who imitated the great Italian master frequently served as texts for 16th century madrigals. In this ...connection, the author of the present article poses the question about the possible impact of the fixed poetic form on the form of the respective musical composition. A preliminary familiarization with madrigals composed on the texts of the sonnets, ballatas and sestinas (Italian: sestine) has shown that imitations of the poetic forms is the most discernible in those cases when the composer turns to the sestina to set it to music. The main material for analysis has been formed by the cyclic madrigals: Là ver l’aurora che sì dolce l’aura by Orlando di Lasso and Non fu mai cervo si veloce al corso, Sola angioletta starsi in trecie a l’ombra and Giovane donna sotto un verde lauro by Luca Marenzio, composed on the full texts of sestinas, as well as a few other similar works. The sestina consists of six stanzas each containing six lines, along with a conclusory stanza of three lines. The special rhyme pattern for the sestina, featuring six words defining the rhythms invariably repeated in the six main stanzas following the scheme, ABCDEF FAEBDC CFDABE, etc., generates the repetition of the end-word of the previous stanza in the beginning of the first line of the following stanza. As it is shown in the article, it is particularly this feature of the sestina that finds resonance with the form of the madrigal. The end of the previous section of a madrigal and the beginning of the following section have a connection established between them, which, as a rule, is achieved by means of repetitions. This concerns the melodic units and the characteristic details of sound, both the harmonic and the melodic varieties. Along with repetitions, a single harmonic construction is used, which begins at the conclusion of one section of a madrigal and concludes at the beginning of the following section.
John Jordan ?, A Plan of the House where Shakespeare was Born, National Museum in Krakow / Princes Czartoryski Library, MS 12234, laboratory Stock National Museum in Krakow. The accompanying text ...describes the "happy days of boyhood" spent in the house in Henley Street.12 Other narratives emphasized the fact that Shakespeare spent not only his childhood but also a large part of his life in his family home: the chair was, as Jefferson noted, the piece of furniture "in which he usually wrote." In these narratives, the modest piece of furniture standing by the fireplace became the Writer's Chair in the sense assigned to the phrase by Nicola J. Watson: it was "provided with markers of signification and valuation, and framed within narratives of place and of the nature and moment of creation," thereby constituting "the microcosm of the writer's actuality. The idea of the writer's chair as a source of authorial inspiration emerged in the last quarter of the eighteenth century in connection with probably the most famous poet's chair in history: the chair in which Petrarch was believed to have sat while working in his house in Arqua in the late years of his life and in which, according to the legend, he died.14 Described and depicted from the early seventeenth century on, Petrarch's chair became a cult object for the poet-lover and sometimes also a prop used in ceremonies.15 It was only in the late eighteenth century, however, that the writer's chair began to be imagined as a source of inspiration for the author's admirers.
