Description
Book SynopsisAt the centre of Petrarch's vision, announcing a new way of seeing the world, was the individual, a sense of the self. This self seemed to be fragmented in Petrarch's work, divided among the worlds of philosophy, faith, and love of the classics, politics, art, and religion. This book shows how these fragmentary explorations relate to each other.
Trade Review"A very important study. Mazzotta not only gives us a dense and rich new portrait of a much-studied and absolutely major figure, but he also brings to the fore the abiding force and value of Petrarch's 'worlds' of discourse and thought to many of today's debates regarding, for example, the relation of aesthetics and rhetoric to the politico-historical realm, or the epistemological validity of poetry, or the constructedness of the self."—Rebecca West, University of Chicago
"A richly textured, deeply learned, and broadly inclusive study of Petrarch's writing, his historical situation, and his contribution to our own cultural formation."—William Kennedy, Cornell University
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments ix
Note on Petrarch's Texts xiii
Introduction 1
I. Antiquity and the New Arts 14
II. The Thought of Love 33
III. The
Canzoniere and the Language of the Self 58
IV. Ethics of Self 80
V. The World of History 102
VI. Orpheus: Rhetoric and Music 129
VII. Humanism and Monastic Spirituality 147
Appendix 1: Petrarch's Song 126 167
Appendix 2: Ambivalence of Power 181
Notes 193
Index 223
