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
Works Studied
Although Italian humanists sometimes wrote long works, their preferred genres of expression were the oration, the letter, and poetry. Consequently, although the seminar will study several extensive texts, some of the reading will focus on selected letters and poems which, despite their apparently fragmentary character, constitute vital ingredients of Petrarch's corpus. Indeed, the importance of these short pieces tells a good deal about the methodology and thought processes of the humanist who composed them.
The two substantial works scheduled for discussion are De vita solitaria composed in 1347, and translated by Jacob Zeitlin, The Life of Solitude by Francis Petrarch (Champaign, 1924), the Secretum, written between 1347-1353, translated by Carol E. Quillen (Boston, 2003). The first, painting urban life in lurid details, praises the life of withdrawal and in its biographical sketches of ascetics provides a form of history of the solitary life. The Secretum, consisting of a dialogue between Franciscus and Augustinus, takes the form of a confession by Franciscus (Petrarch?) in the course of which the speaker lays bare his inner conflicts to Augustinus. What appears to be a third book, Sine nomine (trans. N. Zacour [Toronto, l973]), is in fact a collection of nineteen letters written against the Avignon Papacy between the early 1340s and 1358/9. These reveal not only Petrarch's complicated religious feelings and thoughts but also his vision of Rome as the secular and religious capital of the world. We will read these letters, and in addition several other relevant letters edited by Emilio Cosenza, Francesco Petrarch and the Revolution of Cola di Rienzo (Chicago, 1913). The remainder of the reading consists of poems and letters - Petrarch's Lyric Poems:The Rime Sparse and Other Lyrics, ed. R. Durling (Cambridge, Mass., 1976) and Rerum familiarum libri, trans. Aldo Bernardo, 3 vols.(Binghamton, 1975-85).
I intend to bring with me a number of recent biographies of Petrarch: Morris Bishop, Petrarch and His World (Bloomington, 1963); Thomas Bergin, Petrarch (New York, 1970);and Kenelm Foster, Petrarch, Poet and Humanist (Edinburg, 1984). I will also have available Hans Baron's Petrarch Secretum: Its Making and Its Meaning (Cambridge, 1985).