Description
Book SynopsisDavid Young''s version of Petrarch will refresh our images of the West''s crucial lyric poet. We are given a Petrarch in our own vernacular, with echoes of Wyatt, Shakespeare, and many who come after. --Harold Bloom
Ineffable sweetness, bold, uncanny sweetness
that came to my eyes from her lovely face;
from that day on I''d willingly have closed them,
never to gaze again at lesser beauties.
--from Sonnet 116
Petrarch was born in Tuscany and grew up in the south of France. He lived his life in the service of the church, traveled widely, and during his lifetime was a revered, model man of letters.
Petrarch''s greatest gift to posterity was his Rime in vita e morta di Madonna Laura, the cycle of poems popularly known as his songbook. By turns full of wit, languor, and fawning, endlessly inventive, in a tightly composed yet ornate form they record their speaker''s unrequited obsession with the woman named Laura. In t
