Why Avignon and the Vaucluse? The Organization of the Petrarch Seminar
The Duality in Petrarch: Avignon vs.
the Valley of Vaucluce
The Goal of the Seminar
Thematic Organization of the Seminar
SYLLABUS
Works Studied
The Goal of the Seminar
On the basis of a close reading of a selection of Petrarch's prose and poetry, the four-week seminar, "Petrarch in Provence: Between Seclusion and the World," will endeavor to illuminate the constitution of this "first modern man," fighting to reconcile the demands of humility with his lust for glory; his devotion to pagan literature with his Christian commitment; the pull toward contemplation with devotion to practical moral reform; and his belief in the need to control his body with its passionate nature. That the ancient authorities both pagan and Christian often gave conflicting prescriptions for resolving these tensions augmented his own sense of responsibility as he struggled, often in anguish, with conflicting emotions in himself. The unique approach of the seminar, located at Avignon and the Vaucluse, consists in its dealing with the moral and vocational conflict within Petrarch as figured geographically in his writings by Avignon and the valley.
Thematic Organization of the Seminar
While fourteen of the sixteen formal meetings will be in Avignon, two will be held in the Valley so that participants can appreciate at first hand how Petrarch’s Vaucluse poems and letters are linked to events and images of his daily life. We will see the cave from which the spring “concealing green emeralds beneath its glassy surface flows” (Ep. Met., 3,1,line 7). Coming by moonlight into this cave, “hollowed deep out of the rocks of an overhanging mountain not by human but by natural causes,” he experienced a sense of religious awe (Vita solitaria, 2,10,c.2): “We venerate the sources of great rivers: every sudden bursting of a vast stream from a hidden source has its altar.” He sketched into his Pliny the plan for a church to the Virgin he intended to build above this cave. His Met. EP. 3,1, playfully describing a battle with nymphs to establish a field at the very edge of the Fount of the Sorgue where “my nine companions, in their tattered robes can bathe in the clear waters,” reflects the inspiration of country life.
On the other hand, he referred to the enormous pile of the papal palace in Avignon as “the second tower of Babel” (Sine nominee 10) and the haunt of “the enemies of heaven” (Canzoniere, 106). The Vita solitaria itself is partly set in Avignon. In these narrow streets he is jostled and pushed, “asked to dinner” against his will, and “forced to talk and suffer the stares of other men” (I, 4, c.9). He spoke of his hopes for a restoration of Rome with an unidentified stranger, perhaps Cola de Rienzo, in the vestibule of St. Agricol in 1343, near his residence in the palace of the Colonna, of which only the tower remains. In his Sine nomine Avignon becomes symbolic of the exiled papacy and of the evils ensuing from the desertion of Rome.