Petrarch

Nella letteratura italiana dal XIV al XVIII secolo ha discreta fortuna e circolazione il tema della sconfitta del dio dell’amore, umiliato e privato delle proprie armi soprattutto dalle donne. A partire dalle fonti classiche dell’episodio, rintracciabili nell’epigrammatica alessandrina e nel "Cupido cruciatus" di Decimo Magno Ausonio, si ricostruiscono il significato e le molteplici declinazioni del soggetto nella produzione letteraria italiana, dal "Triumphus Pudicitie" di Francesco Petrarca alla poesia in ottava rima di Luigi Pulci e Angelo Poliziano, dalle raccolte di emblemi ed imprese ai poemetti encomiastici cinquecenteschi in lode di donne, dalle opere di Moderata Fonte e Lucrezia Marinelli alla letteratura morale settecentesca (con particolare attenzione per l’"Amore disarmato" attribuito a Jacopo Durandi). Ripercorrere le tappe della ricezione, tra riscrittura e risemantizzazione, del topos di Cupido punito e disarmato significa andare oltre un’indagine puramente tematica, per ricostruire la fortuna, letteraria ma anche iconografica, di un motivo di lunga durata.
Questo libro ha vinto il Premio Tesi di Dottorato istituito dalla Sapienza Università di Roma, nell’edizione 2013."

Appena tornato a Firenze [sc. da Padova, nell'aprile 1351] il Boccaccio si propose di donare al suo ospite, forse una copia della corrispondenza tra Dante e Giovanni del Virgilio, certo un esemplare della Commedia. E da uno scrittoio donde un'ampia serie di codici del poema di Dante si diffuse a Firenze e nella Toscana prima e subito dopo la metà del Trecento si procurò l'attuale Vaticano Latino 3199, dove volle premettere un suo carme di presentazione del dono e di elogio del poeta della Commedia: "Ytalie iam certus honos, cui tempora lauro…" 1 .

https://www.figuratiomundi.net

Im Rahmen des trinationalen Graduiertenkollegs »Erzählen, Weltverstehen und-darstellen in Mittelalter und Renaissance: Möglichkeiten der Integration nationaler Forschungsansätze und Schwerpunkte« (Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Université Clermont-Auvergne-Università di Pisa) stehen ab dem 1. Januar 2021 an der FAU Erlangen-Nürnberg vier Plätze zur Promotion zur Verfügung.

L'ultime canzone du Canzoniere de Pétrarque est adressée à Marie, figure virginale et céleste dont le poète espère qu'elle saura le détourner définitivement de Laure et étouffer l'amour pondus qui le lie à cette dame au laurier, "celle qui des femmes est le soleil". Toutefois, la lumière mariale n'éclipse pas l'enchanteresse dont les traits réapparaissent insidieusement sur le visage de la Vierge mère. Tentative avortée de retrouver la voie droite, de mettre fin à l'errance et de quitter la forêt obscure des désirs, cette dernière pièce propose une image profonde et kaléidoscopique de la créature féminine inspiratrice du texte, figure qui fascine, distrait mais aussi rassure et promet le paradis.

En el presente artículo pretendemos observar, principalmente, la translatio del poema épico "Africa" de Petrarca a la obra de Antoni Canals, "Scipió e Anibal", en-marcado dentro de la prosa catalana de finales del XIV-principios del XV, época dorada para las letras valencianas. Por otro lado, y en primer lugar, nos pareció oportuno ver el recorrido de la presencia y figura de la obra de Tito Livio desde la tardoantigüedad, pasando por su recepción en la Edad Media hasta llegar al Renacimiento donde retomará vigor. Primero sería "descubierto" por el prehumanismo de Lovato Lovati y finalmente por la refundición de Petrarca (el conocido códice harleyano) y la influencia del historiógrafo paduano en el Renacentista que le ha-ría componer su poema épico, a imagen de una "Eneida" nacionalista, "Africa", que nos llevará hasta Canals, con su traducción libre del "Scipió e Anibal", donde nos expone los cambios de la fortuna, muy influenciado por la prosa de Bernat Metge.

Petrarch’s reception in Czech lands from the 14th century to nowdays: Petrarch’s contacts with Charles IV’s court in Prague, his reception in the age of Reformation and Humanism, Petrarch in historical libraries, Czech translations and criticism.

“Blue Universe (flowers of symbiosis)” is a book containing
a love poem, divided into four parts in ascending progression:
from the beholding and idealisation of the Beloved Woman (I);
the approach (II); the discouragement (III); in the end, the full
expression of love happens, with an invitation to the Beloved,
unveiling the full thrill through the accomplishment of love
(IV).
This album was influenced by the “Song of Songs”.
Drawings by ANA PINTO, inspired in this light poetry,
illustrate the idyllic setting and the tension created by this
magic book.
This love poem is an english translation of the original portuguese poem "Universo azul (flores da simbiose)".

En las páginas finales de la primera traducción completa al español del Canzoniere de Petrarca (Madrid, 1591) 1 , el traductor Enrique Garcés, incluyó un texto suyo original que, por su excepcional interés histórico, ha llamado la atención de muchos estudiosos, incluso de forma más intensa que la propia traducción. Se trata de un imitación declarada de la Canción de Petrarca Italia mia benché 'l parlar sia indarno (Rerum Vulgarium Fragmenta 128, de ahora en adelante Italia mia) en la cual Garcés asume el compromiso político-civil de Petrarca, al trasladar la invectiva de la canción original contra los mercenarios que asolaban la Italia del s. XIV a los problemas económicos y sociales del Perú del s. XVI 2 .

Petrarca e Agostino a confronto su un passo virgiliano (En. VI, 730-734): nota sul finale del primo libro del Secretum Sulla scia di un filone critico che, seppur minoritario, ha messo in luce la rilettura platonica della cultura cristiana operata dal Petrarca (Gulio Augusto Levi, Heitmann, Martinelli), il nostro contributo dimostra che Secretum I, 64 presenta per bocca del

L’ultimo verso del sonetto 319 contiene un’immagine che non pone problemi ai moderni (a partire dall’Ottocento), ma nei secoli precedenti è sempre stata travisata o persino condannata dai commentatori. A partire da tale verso, l’analisi del sonetto porta in luce un aspetto molto poco, per così dire, petrarchista dell’opera di Petrarca, legato piuttosto alle attitudini spirituali dell’«autunno del Medioevo».

Edito in «Atti e Memorie dell’Accademia Galileiana di Scienze, Lettere ed Arti già dei Ricovrati e Patavina», vol. CXIX (2006-2007), parte III: Memorie della Classe di Scienze Morali, Lettere ed Arti, Padova 2008, pp. 375-98.

Scholarship on Petrarch has generally intepreted the figure of Laura-as-Medusa as a projection of the poet's internal conflict between sacred and profane love. Such a reading takes Medusa as a threat to Petrarch's agency. Yet Petrarch's Laura-Medusa is suggestively figured as only her disembodied head, a weapon ultimately manipulated by Perseus. This reversal of agency has an impact on Petrarch's complicated theory of poetic inspiration, and reaches beyond the relationship between poet and beloved to encompass another fraught paradigm of power: the relationship between poet and patron. By recalling the disembodied head of Medusa in the figure of Laura, and recovering the political symbolism of the appropriation of her petrifying gaze, Petrarch creates a model of poetic agency that he uses to stage his relationship to patronage in the Latin Africa and a poem addressed to his Colonna patrons.

This paper examines Petrarch's Canzoniere as an attempted mediation of the poet's fragmented self, creating a 'space of coexistence' between the poet's intrinsic human desire and sorrow and his Christian reason. I choose 'attempted' as this essay reveals the laborious struggle the poet faces as he attempts to mediate and reconcile the irreconcilable pluralities within the human psyche.

The dialogue treatise De remediis utriusque fortune is often considered a repetitive work of little literary value. A previously neglected dialogue, "De totius corporis dolore ac languore vario" (II, 114), deviates from the overall structure of this work, while it has surprising common points (in terms of themes, sources, dialogue structure and meta-dialogical reflection) with Secretum. The article brings the hypothesis that the Dialog II, 114 represents an initial idea of De remediis, based originally on the Ciceronian model and later abandoned in favour of a large moral encyclopedia of Pseudo-Senecan derivation.

Cet ouvrage raconte l’incroyable histoire du citoyen romain le plus célèbre du Moyen Âge, Cola di Rienzo (1313-1354). Homme instruit et brillant, il subjugue les foules par de beaux discours, rêve de rendre Rome à son antique gloire et prend le pouvoir en 1347. Il a alors trente-quatre ans. Visionnaire politique, humaniste ou encore homme de foi attiré par des idéaux de réforme révolutionnaires, il est considéré à l'époque romantique comme un précurseur de l’Unité italienne. Personnalité complexe, ambitieux et plein de contradictions, il n’hésite pas à se mettre en scène dans de superbes cérémonies, s’imaginant déjà empereur. Il connaîtra toutefois une fin tragique.
Cette nouvelle biographie illumine ce personnage hors du commun qui possédait l’art inné d’utiliser les mots pour séduire et convaincre. L'Auteur décrypte les ressorts d’une propagande qui permit à cet homme du peuple d’accéder au pouvoir. Il nous amène ainsi à réfléchir sur le thème toujours d’actualité de la dangereuse puissance de la propagande et des rhétoriques populistes.

"Carter's music poses struggles of opposition, for instance in timbre (Double Concerto), space (String Quartet No. 3) or pulse (String Quartet No. 5). His preference for the all-interval tetrachords, 4–Z15 [0, 1, 4, 6] and 4–Z29 [0, 1, 3, 7], is also well known. From these facets of Carter's music, I develop a narrative interpretation of his Petrarch sonnet–inspired solo flute piece, Scrivo in Vento (1991). Specifically, I forge narrative pathways by imagining the two tetrachords as active agents opposed in competition. Previous Scrivo analyses (Capuzzo 2002; Childs 2006) stress continuity by revealing Q-transforms and common-note voice leading between the tetrachords. While acknowledging such features, my analysis emphasises oppositional struggle by tracing the tetrachords as separate entities which cooperate and conflict as they manoeuvre to outdo each other.

The analysis advances three theses: (1) it guides listening to and reading Scrivo in a way which resonates with Carter's concern for the aesthetics of oppositional struggle, his choice of a sonnet as inspiration and his affinity for all-interval tetrachords; (2) it shows that music-analytical detail can be organised into dramatic narratives by (a) projecting dramatic roles onto categories asserted by a formal theory and (b) treating the formal theory's relations metaphorically as actions performed by each role as the musical work unfolds; and (3) it shows how detailed pc-set analysis can support a Heraclitean view of music: a flux of opposing forces seeking and resisting unity."

Torino, ex Sala Lauree della Facoltà di Lettere via sant'Ottavio, 20 -piano terra 10-12 Febbraio 2015 Le Giornate Internazionali Interdisciplinari di Studio sul Medioevo hanno lo scopo di creare uno spazio qualificato di incontro e di convergenza su un tema di interesse macroscopico fra le varie discipline che studiano la letteratura medievale. Le precedenti edizioni delle «Giornate»:

The stereotypical image of Marcus Tullius Cicero as the best orator and the worst  poetaster in the history of literature was born as far back as in Antiquity. It swiftly spread with the development of instituted schooling and became an integral part of the portrayal of Graeco-Roman culture, passed down from generation to generation within Western civilization.  In the present paper we shall outline the characteristics of the stereotype of Cicero the Poet along with its influence on Classical Studies and humanistic culture writ large. Special focus will be put on  extracting the very roots of this stereotype. Furthermore, it will be shown that the particular case of Cicero the Poet ought to be reconsidered in the context of a wider process we have been witnessing in recent times: the disintegration of traditional  models which, paradoxically, offers many appealing  opportunities for Classical Studies to better understand the  past and to develop in new, ground-breaking directions.

Les oeuvres littéraires qui se construisent en amont et en aval d’un axe vertical sont légion, si bien que les topos de la verticalité en deviennent une image de la littérature. Cette verticalité est aussi celle de la transcendance, que la littérature, même lorsqu’elle reste dans l’immanence, longe et croise pour déployer dans son langage l’expérience humaine. Le mythe le plus puissant qui gravite autour de cet axe est celui de la Chute et de la Rédemption, issu de la Bible et façonné par des siècles de traditions exégétiques. La littérature est traversée par ce mythe, auquel elle mêle clandestinement l’ancrage spatial du langage. Cet enchevêtrement est la matière que ce livre explore à travers l’étude des oeuvres les plus diverses, depuis les Pères de l’Église jusqu’au XXIe siècle : Augustin, Jérôme, Alphonse X, Adgar, Pétrarque, María de Zayas, Rétif de la Bretonne, Victor Hugo, Charles Dickens,  Thomas de Quincey, Alfred de Musset, Edgar A. Poe, Franz Rosensweig, Albert Cohen, Lion Feuchtwanger, José Gallegos Lara, Miguel Delibes, Tolkien, C. S. Lewis, Alejandro Jodorowski, Don DeLillo.
Dans un monde en crise et en quête de sens, où paraissent constamment des ouvrages littéraires ou artistiques à empreintes bibliques, poser correctement la question des rapports entre la littérature et les écrits sacrés est essentiel. Cela contribue à la connaissance du fait littéraire et à la prise de conscience de ses enjeux dans cette quête spirituelle de plus en plus viscérale. Choisir le mythe de la Chute et de la Rédemption vise à comprendre en quoi ces écrits ont contribué à défi nir le statut de la littérature et à inciter le lecteur à s’interroger sur ce concept au sein d’une civilisation façonnée par une longue histoire religieuse au coeur des débats contemporains.

The period known as the Italian Renaissance witnessed a rebirth of Greek learning and, along with it, a renewed impetus to translate the two epic poems, the Iliad and Odyssey, attributed to Homer in antiquity. During the course of one century (1362-1460s) there were more than a dozen attempts to translate Homer from Greek into Latin. These Latin versions were the first to be printed in the fifteenth century and in turn offered a template for the first vernacular translations well into the seventeenth century. In addition to translation practice, humanists also began to develop increasingly more sophisticated ways of thinking about the task of the translator and thus did much to advance the field of translation theory. Despite this decisive contribution to the history of Homer's reception and interpretation, critical commentary on the period as a whole has been largely negative. The argument of this dissertation is that much of the scholarship on Homer's reception in the Renaissance is still beholden to aesthetic assumptions inherited from the period in question. Chief among them is the assumption that translation can only take place between two texts (source and target) and that one of the most important features of a good translation is its fidelity to the source text, whether that be in word or sense. Additionally, scholars often expect a translation to stand alone as a piece of literature in its own right. Many humanists of the day and scholars thereafter held Homeric translations up to these standards and judged them a "failure." By applying a historical-contextualist methodology, I put pressure on the "failure thesis" by arguing that there was never any consensus about the standards to which translators ought to hold themselves; these standards changed over time; and in many cases they were simply impossible to fulfill. These translations can be divided into three phases: Literal ("The Feather") (1362-1440s), Oratorical ("The Wing") (1438-1460s), and Verse translation ("The Flight") (1440s-1500).

La critica ha chiarito la considerevole presenza del poeta aretino nella lirica novecentesca ed ha illustrato le letture petrarchesche di Giuseppe ungaretti, nell'opera del quale l'eredità di Petrarca rappresenta ben più di qualche semplice citazione o rimando 1 . Cortellessa definisce il poeta di Alessandria d'egitto «il più autorevole e autorizzato dei nipotini novecenteschi di Petrarca» 2 e in questo senso il presente saggio vuole aggiungere un tassello allo sforzo esegetico di trovare una ulteriore consonanza tra il poeta trecentesco e ungaretti, con la consapevolezza che tale sforzo è destinato ad un «quantum d'indecidibilità […] se è vero che la porzione di lingua italiana che i Rerum vulgarium fragmenta selezionano e lasciano in eredità al canone poetico italiano coincide quasi con l'intero -è quasi perfettamente sovrapponibile, insomma, alla lingua italiana nel suo complesso» 3 . tali osservazioni possono valere, e contrario, per la pretesa di identificare petrarchismi provenienti dalle opere latine: se la lingua poetica novecentesca è sostanzialmente quella di Petrarca tanto da vanificare nei fatti una puntuale individuazione di ciò che è assolutamente ed indiscutibilmente petrarchesco, è ancora più arduo cercare un'eco di Petrarca proveniente da opere la cui lettura e conoscenza stesse non sono scontate.

Essay published in: Nordic Museology, 28 (2020), 1, pp. 8-22.

Writers’ and artists’ residences developed into museums only at the end
of the eighteenth and beginning of the nineteenth centuries, when houses inhabited by Walpole, Rousseau and Petrarch as well as Canova’s birthplace were turned into tourist destinations. This shift is apparent in the guidebooks to these mansions published in the decades between 1780 and 1840. In examining such booklets, this article highlights the long-term transformations of the phenomenon of the writers’ and artists’ house, and particularly the changing interaction of curators and visitors these texts allow to identify. In order to investigate this evolution in museological communication, this essay discusses the guidebooks to Horace Walpole’s Twickenham villa (1784), Petrarch’s country house in Arquà close to Padua (1797 and 1830), the villa and gardens designed by Melchiorre Cesarotti in Selvazzano also close to Padua (1810), Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s “Les Charmettes” near Chambéry (1811) and Canova’s studio/residence/museum in Possagno (1837).

Petrarch in Provence. A Valley, a Town, a Mountain
Francesco Petrarch used to define himself as an eternal pilgrim having lived in numerous different places. He spent a significant part of his life in the Provence region in southern France, initially in Carpentras and later in Avignon and Vaucluse. This book is concerned with how Petrarch depicted these locales in Provence. The book asserts that although the poet was not attempting to describe Provence in a systematic manner as a region, one can nevertheless choose three locales which he depicted extremely impressively in his literary works, these being: Vaucluse, Avignon and Mont Ventoux.
Vaucluse is a valley not far from Avignon where Petrarch purchased a house closely adjacent to the source of the Sorgue river in the year 1337. Petrarch lived a simple country life here immersed in reading and writing. This space gradually became embodied with numerous meanings. Petrarch first and foremost placed this locale in polemic fashion against the busy and morally corrupt life of the town, concretely in Avignon. He takes pains to draw attention to his simple meals, clothes, contact with the surrounding nature and his isolation from people. His time spent in Vaucluse is also an attempt at emulating the lives of ancient Roman writers and statesmen who retired to their rural villas for study and repose. Since Petrarch did not have their financial resources, he opted for at least a truly remarkable locale, the valley and the source of the Sorgue, these being not only natural beauties but also having been referred to in classical sources. The valley also has a certain Christian genius loci, since the distinct spring has been from time immemorial (even during pagan times) a revered spot, with St. Veranus having even spent several years in the valley as a hermit. Petrarch’s life here undoubtedly also had spiritual and hermit-like features. Vaucluse has become celebrated by the fact that Petrarch set the plot of his lyrical collection Rerum vulgarium fragmenta and experienced primarily here his long and unfulfilled love for Laura. The nature around Vaucluse served as a means for evoking the fleeting visits by Laura to the valley. The continually changing natural backdrop serves to create the effect of an analogy or contrast to his spiritual states of mind.
Vaucluse is located in a strong polemical tension in relation to Avignon which was home to the Papal Curia in Petrarch’s day and which was a truly lively political and cultural centre at the time. Petrarch constantly attacked the French Papal Curia as a historical anomaly which had broken away from the apostolic beginnings, forsaken Holy Rome and was in his eyes living a life of debauchery. Petrarch’s descriptions of Avignon are extremely expressive and display his profound disgust with the situation. In the descriptions, Petrarch makes use of metaphorical images, comparisons with Babylon, Hell and a labyrinth. He employs almost apocalyptic rhetoric in long impassioned lines and metaphors focused on the sins, vices and debaucheries which reign in Avignon.
The third prominent locale in Provence is Mont Ventoux which Petrarch climbed on 26 April 1336 accompanied by his brother. This was only a short incident in his life and there are even doubts existing as to whether the climb actually even took place. Nevertheless, this letter, with its remarkable depiction of the mountain scenery and masterful transition between the description of the actual ascent and a description of his spiritual states of mind, has become one of Petrarch’s most celebrated texts. The present book is primarily concerned with the autobiographical features of the letter and the poet’s subjectivity linked with a feeling for the natural world. A detailed commentary has been written about the letter.
The book deals with the above-mentioned three locales with the use of all of the relevant criticism. It takes a stance on the various interpretative positions. It is actually the first book ever to place the three locales in Provence into mutual linkages and study their literary depictions in one piece. It focuses attention on the connections with literary tradition (in particular the typologies, locus amoenus, locus horridus, mountains as a point of contact with the deity), on the actual, allegorical and symbolic portrayal of space, the moral connotations of places, Petrarch’s autobiographical exhibitions, the innovative treatment of nature in love discourse and the depiction of literary space from the perspective of literary theory (first and foremost a phenomenological focus). The book also provides a complete translation of the relevant texts with a detailed commentary accompanying them. The majority of these texts have been translated into Czech for the first time.

Il saggio considera l'insieme degli atteggiamenti di Petrarca nei confronti del cibo, testi-moniati da una lunga serie di passi sparsi nella sua opera, e in particolare in alcune impor-tanti lettere «Senili». Da questo esame risultano varie funzioni assegnate al discorso sull'alimentazione: quella oppositiva, che distingue tra gozzoviglia e moderazione, tra cibi artefatti e cibi naturali, tra sporcizia e pulizia, e infine, sul piano sociale e politico, tra lusso e corruzione da una parte, e modestia e virtù dall'altro; quella positiva, che associa la buona e semplice alimentazione naturale alla salute e alla vita tranquilla e solitaria; quella estetica, non meno importante delle altre, che fa del modo di nutrirsi un «test» particolarmente importante sulla civiltà e la buona educazione. Cibarsi, insomma, è per Petrarca un fatto assolutamente culturale, e con ciò egli chiaramente supera i dilemmi della morale cristiana, e pone per primo le basi per una riflessione moderna sull'argomento. Abstract The research considers the combined attitudes of Petrarch in comparison with food, attested by a long series of scattered steps in his work and, in particular, in some significant «Senile» letters. There are various functions resulting from this research, aimed at the discussion of nutrition: The opposing, which distinguishes between gluttony and moderate eating, artificial and natural foods, cleanliness and dirtiness —on both a social and political level, between luxury and depravation, on the one hand, and modesty and virtue, on the other. The positive, associates a good, simple natural diet with health and a peaceful, private life. The aesthetic, of no less importance than the others, tests eating habits, proven particularly important with regard to civilisation and good education. In short, for Pe-trarch, eating was a completely cultural event, with which one clearly overcame Christian moral dilemmas and which firmly stood by its foundations for a modern reflection on the debate.

In his Rerum vulgarium fragmenta, Petrarch demonstrates in a hitherto unseen manner how love is extremely ambiguous. Love is at one and the same time that which creates his identity, and that which dissolves it anew, it is simultaneously creation and destruction, recognition and alienation, pleasure and suffering -life and death. That is how (in the words of the brilliant Petrarch scholar Sara Sturm-Maddox) his amorous subjectivity is profoundly ambiguous. 1 The project of the poet is monological, and he strives toward a unity with himself, actualized in a circular and narcissistic auto-communication in which he (so to speak) listens to his own speech -whereby he aims at being his own sender and recipient. But nevertheless he must concurrently affirm and negate the other, who mirrors the poet's self-consciousness, but who contrarily alienates him as well. He has to express himself in the other in order to appear to himself which reluctantly makes the monological project dialogical. It is this fundamental, ambivalent conflict of poetry, which Petrarch eminently analyzes in his life's work. He has a strong inclination toward being solitary, unique, independent, and self-enclosed, whereby he consequently objects the other to negation. However, he often emphasizes that selfconsciousness must make the detour by the other, if it is to achieve understanding and consciousness of itself. The purpose of this essay is to demonstrate that Petrarch's conception of love is ambivalent, and that it is due to the poet's special relation to the other, who is both conceived of as an opportunity and an obstacle to the manifestation of self-consciousness, auto-affection, and subjectivity.