Related Papers
Renaissance and Reformation
“Mon semblable, mon frère”: Brothers Petrarch and Literary Self-Construction
Doyeeta Majumder
This article posits that in the texts (both epistolary and otherwise) associated explicitly with his brother Gherardo, Petrarch does not just showcase the familiar, intimate style that characterizes the whole corpus of his familiar letters but also presents some of the most acutely reflexive ruminations on his own stylistic and, by extension, literary practices. In the Gherardine letters, as well as in the first eclogue of the Bucolicum carmen, which is attached to one of these letters, Petrarch rehearses the highlights of the debates surrounding rhetorical style that were being played out in Trecento Europe, while simultaneously demonstrating his attempts to engage with alternatives to the modes of Ciceronian writing, both grand and intimate. In these works, Petrarch’s brother comes to embody this stylistic alternative.
(Leiden: Brill, 2012)
Petrarch and St. Augustine: Classical Scholarship, Christian Theology, and the Origins of the Renaissance in Italy
2012 •
Alexander Lee
Despite the high regard in which Francesco Petrarca (1304-74) held St. Augustine, scholars have been inclined to view Augustine’s impact on the content of Petrarch’s thought rather lightly. Wedded to the ancient classics, and prioritising literary imitation over intellectual coherence, Petrarch is commonly thought to have made inconsistent use of St. Augustine’s works. Adopting an entirely fresh approach, however, this book argues that Augustine’s early writings consistently provided Petrarch with the conceptual foundations of his approach to moral questions, and with a model for integrating classical precepts into a coherent Christian framework. As a result, this book offers a challenging re-interpretation of Petrarch’s humanism, and offers a provocative new interpretation of his role in the development of Italian humanism.
‘Sin City? The image of Babylon in Petrarch’s Canzoniere'
Alexander Lee
in J. Fitzpatrick, ed., The Idea of the City: Early Modern, Modern and Post-Modern Locations and Communities (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Press, 2009), 39-52.
A Humanistic Approach to Religious Solitude. The De Otio Religioso (Petrarch)
Susanna Barsella
Boccaccio, Petrarch, and Peter Damian. Two Models of the Humanist Intellectual
Susanna Barsella
Imagined Travels and Neoplatonic Pilgrimage in Petrarch’s ‘Itinerarium ad sepulcrum Domini nostri Yehsu Cristi’, in: M. M. Bauer / P. Booth / S. Fischer (eds.), To Jerusalem and Beyond. Interdisciplinary Approaches to the Study of Latin Travel Literature ca. 1250–1500, Heidelberg 2023, 189–208.
Martin Bauer-Zetzmann
Petrarch’s ‘Itinerarium ad sepulcrum Domini nostri Yehsu Cristi’ (1358) is noteworthy among late medieval travel and pilgrimage literature for its unusual features, such as its epistolary form, its detailed descriptions of Italian antiques, and its author never actually having visited the Holy Land. However, by comparison with other works from the same period, such as the similarly structured letter dealing with the famous ascent of Mount Ventoux (‘Ad familiares’ 4.1) as well as ‘De otio religioso’, it can be demonstrated that Petrarch combines elements of pilgrimage literature and Neoplatonic philosophy in order to make a statement about the relationships between classical learning, Christian faith, and the human soul’s spiritual journey to God.
Philosophy as a Way of Life in Petrarch, Montaigne, Lipsius
Matthew J Sharpe
Draft for comments of chapter 6 of upcoming book on Philosophy as a Way of Life from Socrates to Today, with M. Ure (Monash). Examines Petrarch, Montaigne and Lipsius as belonging within, and each reworking, a lineage of metaphilosophical thought looking back to the Greeks and Romans rediscovered by the humanists. In this lineage, philosophy as a set of practices is conceived as the means of the cultivation of intellectual and civic virtues, a medicine or therapy of the soul and guide for life. It as such enshrines a wide variety of rhetorical and argumentative strategies, and recommends exercises to transform the person of the philosopher, through rehabituation and the cultivation of an enlarged perspective.
PETRARCH’S “INNER EYE” IN THE FAMILIARIUM LIBRI XXIV (Papy 2010)
Jan Papy
Appeared in: Karl Enenkel & Walter Melion (eds.), Meditatio – Refashioning the Self: Theory and Practice in Late Medieval and Early Modern Intellectual Culture, Intersections, 17 (Leiden-Boston: Brill, 2011).
Blinding the Cyclops: Petrarch after Dante (Familiar Letters 10.4)
Albert Russell Ascoli
The Unpolitical Petrarch: Justifying the Life of Literary Retirement
james hankins
This paper discusses Petrarch's defense of political quietism and literary retirement in his De vita solitaria and other works. It focuses particularly on DVS 2.9.19-22, a passage in which he sets up an implicet dialogue between himself, Seneca and St Augustine.
