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Petrarch and the Petrarchan Tradition in Renaissance Literature and Thought

Petrarch and the Petrarchan Tradition in Renaissance Literature and Thought. Petrarch and Laura , 1842 by Nicaise de Keyser (Flemish) ‏. Francesco Petrarca, ca.1450 by Andrea di Bartolo di Bargilla. Statue (19 th century) of Petrarch, outside Uffizi Gallery, Florence.

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Petrarch and the Petrarchan Tradition in Renaissance Literature and Thought

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  1. Petrarch and the Petrarchan Tradition in Renaissance Literature and Thought Petrarch and Laura, 1842 by Nicaise de Keyser (Flemish)‏ Francesco Petrarca, ca.1450 by Andrea di Bartolo di Bargilla Statue (19th century) of Petrarch, outside Uffizi Gallery, Florence

  2. What are some of the important features of the Renaissance? What broad changes in religion did the Renaissance witness? What are some important inventions of the Renaissance? What are some features that characterize the individual in Renaissance thought? What is “humanism”? What is “Renaissance melancholy”? Humanist Thought in the Early RenaissanceA Context for Petrarch: Norton C, 2465-72

  3. “Renaissance” is French for re-birth The “Renaissance” a term typically used to refer to a period in Early Modern Europe spanning approximately 1350 to 1650 Different countries experienced their Renaissance at different times. Generally, the trend was northward. Italy’s Renaissance (14th century) occurred well before England’s Renaissance (16th century). What “is” the Renaissance?

  4. The Renaissance is conventionally understood as a flowering of the arts emerging from “the questing, self-conscious individual” (Damrosch 149) actively exploring—and thus creating—the self and the world in which the self exists (Pasinetti and James 2468). Pasinetti and James describe literature of the Renaissance as characterized by a “shift toward internal, mental, and psychological portraiture” (2465). Much of that art was drawn from an idea of the ancient world; hence, the Renaissance is a rebirth of classical antiquity in a modern age. It is both a backward-looking movement (classical antiquity) and a forward-looking movement (translating the past for a new, modern world). What are some important features of the Renaissance?

  5. “Renaissance authors, like the characters they invent, inhabited a world of such widespread revolutionary change that they could not passively receive the traditional wisdom of previous ages” (Pasinetti and James 2465). In addition to—and influencing the nature of—the flowering of the arts, great changes were occurring during the Renaissance in the areas of: Religion Technology and Science World Exploration and Discovery Bureaucratic and Institutional Power Economic and Social Power These changes were highly interrelated. What are some important features of the Renaissance?

  6. Religious Changes • This is a period of religious divisiveness. • By Galileo’s recantation of his claims about the heliocentric nature of the universe in 1632, “there were over twenty-five versions of Christianity” (Damrosch 151). • “For Renaissance intellectuals and for the literary characters they created, there was almost literally no firm ground to stand on as they moved through life in an increasingly complex and uncertain world” (Pasinetti and James 2466). • Violent protests about religion occurred, sparking Martin Luther’s Reformation (of the Catholic Church and its means of maintaining absolute power over the people). • In the wake of religious divisiveness, many religious sects left to find colonies and schools in other parts of the world (Puritans left England for Plymouth Rock during the time of the Reformation, for example). • Such divisiveness was a part of the age's “preoccupation with this life rather than with the life beyond” (Pasinetti and James 2468).

  7. Religious Changes • Such “preoccupation with this life rather than with the life beyond” (Pasinetti and James 2468) meant that in general, “the presence of God...is conspicuously less dominating” (2469) in the literature of the period. • See: “the dignity of man” and humanity's “privileged position in creation” (2471)‏ • More accurately, artists and intellectuals were struggling with “the conflict between the values of worldly goods and...the religious conviction in the transitory nature of earthly possessions” (2469). • Religious debates proliferated (2470): “Given the political force of the Catholic Church and the Protestant Reformation, it is no wonder that the Renaissance often appears to be more preoccupied with earthly...empires than with the heavenly king” (2470). • The “religious temper of the age is expressed in its art,” where the earthly and the spiritual are often intermixed (2470). • Petrarch's poems, for instance, reflects a complex treatment of earthly and spiritual desire.

  8. Changes in Technology & Science • The map of the world was being redrawn; by 1632, explorers had traveled to the western coast of South America • The world’s “center” was no longer a function of religious power and primacy, but subordinated to “mathematical precision” (Damrosch 151). • New inventions—like Galileo’s telescope, Gutenberg’s printing press, and important means of navigation—made the “previously unthinkable” eminently possible. • Galileo's friend Campanella “optimistically asserted that the three great inventions of his day—the compass, the printing press, and the gun—were 'signs of the union of the entire world'” (Pasinetti and James 2465). • The quadrant enabled ships to travel from Europe to India and the New World (Damrosch 157). But gunpowder was also a new technology frequently put to use in less unifying ways (Damrosch 156). • Influx of ancient knowledge from the Middle East reinvigorated engineering, architecture, science, and so on. Many of the greatest buildings in Europe were erected during this period, often to celebrate earthly powers and “the dignity of man.”

  9. The Printing Press • The printing press was “an instrument for intellectual deliberation and the dissemination of ideas” (Pasinetti and James 2466). • It “transformed the reading habits of Europeans and enabled them not only to publish but to own materials once restricted to clerics and the wealthy” (Damrosch 157). • Spurring the Reformation and much cultural and religious divisiveness, the printing press also allowed people to participate in a “republic of letters” (Pasinetti and James 2467). • The printing press was a major player in the Reformation, for it allowed biblical texts to be translated into vernaculars, read, and even studied by common people. Which not everyone wanted...! • In fact, the invention of the printing press facilitated the religious divisiveness of the Early Modern period. • With the expanded availability of the press came education and increasing levels of literacy. Men and women could publish their works, something unthinkable before the advent of print. For many more people, writing became “simply one aspect of…daily activities” (Damrosch 159).

  10. The Renaissance Individual • The Renaissance is conventionally understood as a flowering of the arts emerging from “the questing, self-conscious individual” (Damrosch 149) actively exploring—and thus creating—the self and the world in which the self exists (Pasinetti and James 2468). • Pasinetti and James describe literature of the Renaissance as characterized by a “shift toward internal, mental, and psychological portraiture” (2465). • The Renaissance individual characterized by “a singularly high capacity for feeling the delight of earthly achievement” (2471), and literature of the period delves in to the sensuous pleasures—and the questions—of individual, earthly experience. • This is in contrast with the ideal individual of the Medieval period who sees life on earth as mere preparation for the eternal life after death (2468) • Attention to the here-and-now reflected in the “Renaissance code of behavior” (2468) • Balance of power began to move towards the cities: urbanization, commerce, conversation and exchange of ideas

  11. Humanism • “Renaissance” literally means “rebirth”—the “revival and imitation of antiquity” (2467). From this literal sense, the term connotes “a general notion of artistic creativity, of extraordinary zest for life and knowledge, of sensory delight in opulence and magnificence, of spectacular individual achievement” (2466). • “The Renaissance assumption is that there are things highly worth doing, within a strictly temporal pattern [namely, the proper exercise of political power, the act of scientific discovery, the creation of works of art]. By doing them, humanity proves its privileged position in creation...” (Pasinetti and James 2471). • The phrase “the dignity of man” refers to “this positive, strongly affirmed awareness of the intellectual and physical 'virtues' of the human being, and of the individual's place in creation” (2471). • Specifically, spectacular individual human achievement, most frequently visible in human productions—the arts and sciences • “The people who, starting at about the middle of the fourteenth century, gave new impulse to this emulation of the classics are often referred to as humanists.” • “The word...is related to what we call the humanities, and the humanities at that time [referred to the study of] Latin and Greek” texts (2467).

  12. Renaissance Melancholy • “The Renaissance coincided with, and perhaps to some extent occasioned, a loss of firm belief in the final unity and the final intelligibility of the universe” (2471) • With the profound belief in the capacity and ability of the individual, and the delight in earthly accomplishment, there comes the question of “its ultimate worth” (Pasinetti and James 2471) • If the here-and-now is held up as the proper province of human study and action, then how do we judge the value and purpose of “all this activity”? • “Once the notion of this grand unity of design has lost its authority, certainty about the final value of human actions is no longer to be found. For some minds...the sense of void becomes so strong as to paralyze...aspiration to power, thirst for knowledge, or delight in beauty”--this paradox results in an attitude often referred to as “Renaissance melancholy” (2471)‏ • Also results in a “modern sense of alienation” (2476), as experienced by Petrarch

  13. Contemporary of Dante and Boccacio (late Medieval period) But considered the first modern poet and the “Father of Humanism” Most famous for his lyric poetry in the vernacular (Italian, rather than Latin, important because more people could read and understand—not just the educated, scholastic elite) Set the standard for Renaissance lyric poetry, which is primarily characterized by a desire to interrogate and understand the self, the human—this same desire also visible in his letters and essays “Petrarch bequeathed to later humanists the hope that scholar-poets might one day be recognized as shaping forces of the nation-state” (Pasinetti and James 2476). Francesco Petrarca (Petrach)1304-1374

  14. What, most broadly, happens in this letter? What story does it tell? A motif is a repeated image that seems to have an important resonance in the text. What important motifs can you find in this letter? Why do you think Petrarch take the winding path? Petrarch calls this choice a “mistake” (2481) that he made “three times.” In what ways might the choice not be a mistake, but a good thing? What important features of Renaissance thought are evident in this letter? Keeping those important features of Renaissance thought in mind, return to the motifs you discovered. What might these motifs be metaphors for? Why do you think the letter is a good genre or form for this writing? You might start by considering what a letter is. “The Ascent of Mount Ventoux”Genre: slightly fictionalized letter

  15. Skill at fashioning verse, working ingeniously within strict metrical and formal confines, highly valued; much like the confines of the mortal world. The formal poet asks, how high can I soar within these bounds? How Petrarch—father of humanism, also key figure in early modern lyric poetry for his perfection of the sonnet form In Il Canzoniere or Rime Sparse, Petrarch wrote about his struggle to define and understand himself—often caught between earthly and spiritual goods. Laura, his beloved—whom he saw in church one day!--is an embodiment of the tensions his poems explore. Many forms of sonnets, but two you'll be familiar with are Petrarchan and Shakespearean. In general, a sonnet is a dialectical construct that allows the poet to engage two usually contrasting ideas, states, emotions, images, and so on. These two facets are juxtaposed against one another in distinct portions of the sonnet's form. Sometimes they are resolved in the last couplet—or show consequences (common in Shakespearean sonnets)--but often the sonnets simply reveal important existing tensions. Form clearly mirrors and enables, as well as binds and structures, the content.

  16. A sonnet is 14 lines of metrical poetry, divided into two sections by the two differing rhyme groups, the octet (stable, in the Italian/Petrarchan sonnet—always a b b a / a b b a) and the sestet (varies). Often, the way two things rhyme indicates the nature of their relationship. In accordance with the principle (which supposedly applies to all rhymed poetry but often doesn't), a change from one rhyme group to another signifies a change in subject matter. This change occurs at the beginning of L9 in the Italian/Petrarchan sonnet. Change is called the volta, or "turn"; the turn is an essential element of the sonnet form, perhaps the essential element. It is at the volta that the second idea is introduced. Sometimes poets will delay or alter the volta for specific effect. The English/Shakespearean sonnet is more flexible, consisting of four alternately rhymed quartets and a rhyming couplet, though similar relationships between rhyme group and thought exist: a b a b c d c d e f e f g g adapted from Miller, Nelson. “Basic sonnet forms.” Sonnet Central. 17 June 2007. 26 June 2007. <http://www.sonnets.org/basicforms.htm>.

  17. Petrarch (Italian, 1304-1347)‏ Canzoniere I 1 5 9 12 Voi ch'ascoltate in rime sparse il suono di quei sospiri ond'io nudriva 'l core in sul mio primo giovenile errore quand'era in parte altr'uom da quel ch'i' sono, del vario stile in ch'io piango et ragiono fra le vane speranze e 'l van dolore, ove sia chi per prova intenda amore, spero trovar pietà, nonché perdono. Ma ben veggio or sí come al popol tutto favola fui gran tempo, onde sovente di me mesdesmo meco mi vergogno; et del mio vaneggiar vergogna è 'l frutto, e 'l pentersi, e 'l conoscer chiaramente che quanto piace al mondo è breve sogno. Petrarch, Rime I. Read in Italian by Moro Silo.

  18. Francis Petrarch, Canzionere 1 O you who hear within these scattered verses the sound of sighs with which I fed my heart in my first errant youthful days when I in part was not the man I am today; for all the ways in which I weep and speak between vain hopes, between vain suffering, in anyone who knows love through its trials, in them, may I find pity and forgiveness. But now I see how I’ve become the talk so long a time of people all around (it often makes me feel so full of shame), and from my vanities there comes shame’s fruit, and my repentance, and the clear awareness that worldly joy is just a fleeting dream. (published 1470)‏

  19. Petrarch (Italian, 1304-1347)‏ Canzoniere III Era il giorno ch'al sol si scoloraro per la pietà del suo factore i rai, quando i' fui preso, et non me ne guardai, ché i be' vostr'occhi, donna, mi legaro. Tempo non mi parea da far riparo contra colpi d'Amor: però m'andai secur, senza sospetto; onde i miei guai nel commune dolor s'incominciaro. Trovommi Amor del tutto disarmato et aperta la via per gli occhi al core, che di lagrime son fatti uscio et varco: però al mio parer non li fu honore ferir me de saetta in quello stato, a voi armata non mostrar pur l'arco. Read in Italian by Moro Silo.

  20. Bernini, Apollo and Daphne, 1624. Also described in Ovid's Metamorphoses, the story of Apollo and Daphne is one of love, poetry, pursuit, transformation. Apollo, the god of poetry, medicine, light, and archery was struck in malice by an arrow from Cupid; he falls in love—his first love—with Daphne, a nymph whose name means “laurel.” Apollo longs for her, but she flees. As the youth gains on her, she pleads to the gods to change her form, which has brought the danger of rape upon her (her words, not mine!). The gods hear her, and she is transformed into a laurel tree. Apollo adopts the laurel tree as his sign, and the wreath of laurel is given to eminent poets—like Petrarch.

  21. Petrarch, Rime 78 Simone Martini (fl. 1315-1344)‏ The Annunciation and Two Saints (detail, “Mary”) 1333 Tempera on wood Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence While Martini's portrait of Laura has been lost, the painter's stylistic signature is consistent. This image of the Virgin Mary suggests how Martini might have painted the Laura of Petrarch's rimes.

  22. Petrarch, Rime 78 Jean-Léon Gérôme (1824-1904) Pymalion and Galatea, c. 1890 Oil on Canvas Metropolitan Museum of Art In Rime 78, Petrarch invokes the classical image of Pygmalion from Ovid's Metamorphoses: “Pygmalion, how glad you should be of your statue” (9). The poetic speaker goes on to clarify why Pygmalion should be “glad” of his creation, arguing that the mythological artist “received a thousand times” the embraces and other human interaction that the speaker “yearn[s] to have just once!” (10). Who was Pygmalion, and what can we learn about the poet's treatment of Laura from the classical allusion?

  23. Francis Petrarch, Canzionere 189 My ship laden with forgetfulness passes through a harsh sea, at midnight, in winter, between Scylla and Charybdis, and at the tiller sits my lord, rather my enemy; each oar is manned by a ready, cruel thought that seems to scorn the tempest and the end; a wet, changeless wind of sighs, hopes and desires breaks the sail; a rain of weeping, a mist of disdain wet and loosen the already weary ropes, made of error twisted up with ignorance. My two usual sweet stars are hidden; dead among the waves are reason and skill; so that I begin to despair of the port. (published 1470, trans. by Robert Durling, Norton Anthology of World Literature C)‏

  24. Petrarch, Rime 78 Simone Martini (fl. 1315-1344)‏ The Annunciation and Two Saints (detail, “Mary”) 1333 Tempera on wood Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence While Martini's portrait of Laura has been lost, the painter's stylistic signature is consistent. This image of the Virgin Mary suggests how Martini might have painted the Laura of Petrarch's rimes.

  25. Petrarch, Rime 78 Jean-Léon Gérôme (1824-1904) Pymalion and Galatea, c. 1890 Oil on Canvas Metropolitan Museum of Art In Rime 78, Petrarch invokes the classical image of Pygmalion from Ovid's Metamorphoses: “Pygmalion, how glad you should be of your statue” (9). The poetic speaker goes on to clarify why Pygmalion should be “glad” of his creation, arguing that the mythological artist “received a thousand times” the embraces and other human interaction that the speaker “yearn[s] to have just once!” (10). Who was Pygmalion, and what can we learn about the poet's treatment of Laura from the classical allusion?

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