What was francesco petrarch famous for
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Petrarch, Francesco. Petrass, Sari — Petrassi, Goffredo. Petrauskas, Kipras. Petrauskas, Mikas.
Castiglione renaissance
Petre, Maude — Petre, Maude Dominica. Petre, Sir Edward. Petrella, Clara. On 6 April , [ 41 ] after Petrarch gave up his vocation as a priest, the sight of a woman called "Laura" in the church of Sainte-Claire d' Avignon awoke in him a lasting passion, celebrated in the Rerum vulgarium fragmenta "Fragments of Vernacular Matters".
There is little definite information in Petrarch's work concerning Laura, except that she is lovely to look at, fair-haired, with a modest, dignified bearing. Laura and Petrarch had little or no personal contact. According to his "Secretum", she refused him because she was already married. He channeled his feelings into love poems that were exclamatory rather than persuasive, and wrote prose that showed his contempt for men who pursue women.
Upon her death in , the poet found that his grief was as difficult to live with as was his former despair. Later, in his "Letter to Posterity", Petrarch wrote: "In my younger days I struggled constantly with an overwhelming but pure love affair—my only one, and I would have struggled with it longer had not premature death, bitter but salutary for me, extinguished the cooling flames.
I certainly wish I could say that I have always been entirely free from desires of the flesh, but I would be lying if I did". While it is possible she was an idealized or pseudonymous character—particularly since the name "Laura" has a linguistic connection to the poetic "laurels" Petrarch coveted—Petrarch himself always denied it. His frequent use of l'aura is also remarkable: for example, the line "Erano i capei d'oro a l'aura sparsi" may mean both "her hair was all over Laura's body" and "the wind l'aura blew through her hair".
There is psychological realism in the description of Laura, although Petrarch draws heavily on conventionalised descriptions of love and lovers from troubadour songs and other literature of courtly love. Her presence causes him unspeakable joy, but his unrequited love creates unendurable desires, inner conflicts between the ardent lover and the mystic Christian , making it impossible to reconcile the two.
Laura is unreachable and evanescent — descriptions of her are evocative yet fragmentary. Francesco de Sanctis praises the powerful music of his verse in his Storia della letteratura italiana. Gianfranco Contini, in a famous essay "Preliminari sulla lingua del Petrarca". Petrarca, Canzoniere. Turin, Einaudi, , has described Petrarch's language in terms of "unilinguismo" contrasted with Dantean "plurilinguismo".
Petrarch renaissance biography summary
Petrarch is very different from Dante and his Divina Commedia. In spite of the metaphysical subject, the Commedia is deeply rooted in the cultural and social milieu of turn-of-the-century Florence : Dante's rise to power and exile ; his political passions call for a "violent" use of language, where he uses all the registers, from low and trivial to sublime and philosophical.
Petrarch confessed to Boccaccio that he had never read the Commedia , remarks Contini, wondering whether this was true or Petrarch wanted to distance himself from Dante. Dante's language evolves as he grows old, from the courtly love of his early stilnovistic Rime and Vita nuova to the Convivio and Divina Commedia , where Beatrice is sanctified as the goddess of philosophy—the philosophy announced by the Donna Gentile at the death of Beatrice.
In contrast, Petrarch's thought and style are relatively uniform throughout his life—he spent much of it revising the songs and sonnets of the Canzoniere rather than moving to new subjects or poetry. Here, poetry alone provides a consolation for personal grief, much less philosophy or politics as in Dante , for Petrarch fights within himself sensuality versus mysticism , profane versus Christian literature , not against anything outside of himself.
The strong moral and political convictions which had inspired Dante belong to the Middle Ages and the libertarian spirit of the commune ; Petrarch's moral dilemmas, his refusal to take a stand in politics, his reclusive life point to a different direction, or time. The free commune, the place that had made Dante an eminent politician and scholar, was being dismantled: the signoria was taking its place.
Humanism and its spirit of empirical inquiry, however, were making progress—but the papacy especially after Avignon and the empire Henry VII , the last hope of the white Guelphs , died near Siena in had lost much of their original prestige. Petrarch polished and perfected the sonnet form inherited from Giacomo da Lentini and which Dante widely used in his Vita nuova to popularise the new courtly love of the Dolce Stil Novo.
The imperfect rhymes of u with closed o and i with closed e inherited from Guittone's mistaken rendering of Sicilian verse are excluded, but the rhyme of open and closed o is kept. Finally, Petrarch's enjambment creates longer semantic units by connecting one line to the following. The vast majority of Petrarch's poems collected in the Canzoniere dedicated to Laura were sonnets , and the Petrarchan sonnet still bears his name.
Petrarch is often referred to as the father of humanism and considered by many to be the "father of the Renaissance ". He believed in the immense moral and practical value of the study of ancient history and literature—that is, the study of human thought and action. Petrarch was a devout Catholic and did not see a conflict between realizing humanity's potential and having religious faith , although many philosophers and scholars have styled him a Proto-Protestant who challenged the Pope's dogma.
A highly introspective man, Petrarch helped shape the nascent humanist movement as many of the internal conflicts and musings expressed in his writings were embraced by Renaissance humanist philosophers and argued continually for the next years. For example, he struggled with the proper relation between the active and contemplative life, and tended to emphasize the importance of solitude and study.
In a clear disagreement with Dante, in Petrarch argued in De vita solitaria that Pope Celestine V 's refusal of the papacy in was a virtuous example of solitary life.
Petrarch renaissance biography wikipedia
As a result, a number of political, military, and religious leaders during the Renaissance were inculcated with the notion that their pursuit of personal fulfillment should be grounded in classical example and philosophical contemplation. Petrarchism was a 16th-century literary movement of Petrarch's style by Italian, French, Spanish and English followers partially coincident with Mannerism , who regarded his collection of poetry Il Canzoniere as a canonical text.
Liszt also set a poem by Victor Hugo , "Oh! While in Avignon in , Modernist composer Elliott Carter completed his solo flute piece Scrivo in Vento which is in part inspired by and structured by Petrarch's Sonnet , Beato in sogno. It was premiered on Petrarch's th birthday. The team from the University of Padua also hoped to reconstruct his cranium to generate a computerized image of his features to coincide with his th birthday.
The tomb had been opened previously in by Professor Giovanni Canestrini, also of Padua University. When the tomb was opened, the skull was discovered in fragments and a DNA test revealed that the skull was not Petrarch's, [ 64 ] prompting calls for the return of Petrarch's skull. The researchers are fairly certain that the body in the tomb is Petrarch's due to the fact that the skeleton bears evidence of injuries mentioned by Petrarch in his writings, including a kick from a donkey when he was He is credited with being the first and most famous aficionado of numismatics.
He described visiting Rome and asking peasants to bring him ancient coins they would find in the soil which he would buy from them, and writes of his delight at being able to identify the names and features of Roman emperors. Contents move to sidebar hide. Article Talk.
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Petrarch renaissance biography
For the thoroughbred racehorse, see Petrarch horse. For his namesake crater on Mercury, see Petrarch crater. Portrait by Altichiero , c. Italian Tuscan dialect Latin. University of Montpellier University of Bologna. Poetry epic sonnet canzone eclogue canticle other. Prose treatise polemic epistle travelogue autobiography anecdote correspondence oration.
Il Canzoniere Triumphs. Biography [ edit ].
Petrarch renaissance biography examples: Petrarch (born July 20, , Arezzo, Tuscany [Italy]—died July 18/19, , Arquà, near Padua, Carrara) was an Italian scholar, poet, and humanist whose poems addressed to Laura, an idealized beloved, contributed to the Renaissance flowering of lyric poetry.
Youth and early career [ edit ]. He is also considered one of the fathers of the modern Italian language. QUOTES [T]here was a time, there was an age, that was happier for poets, an age when they were held in the highest honor, first in Greece and then in Italy, and especially when Caesar Augustus held imperial sway, under whom there flourished excellent poets: Virgil, Varius, Ovid, Horace, and many others.
My anger has very often injured myself, but never others. It is possible that some word of me may have come to you, though even this is doubtful, since an insignificant and obscure name will scarcely penetrate far in either time or space.
How will posterity believe that there has been a time when without the lightnings of heaven or the fires of earth, without wars or other visible slaughter, not this or that part of the earth, but well-nigh the whole globe, has remained without inhabitants. A short cut to riches is to subtract from our desires. To begin with myself, then, the utterances of men concerning me will differ widely, since in passing judgment almost everyone is influenced not so much by truth as by preference, and good and evil report alike know no bounds.
My fate is to live amid varied and confusing storms. But for you perhaps, if as I hope and wish you will live long after me, there will follow a better age. This sleep of forgetfulness will not last for ever. When the darkness has been dispersed, our descendants can come again in the former pure radiance. I couldn't face making a merchandise of my mind.
Watch Next. Petrarch was also known for being one of the first people to call the Middle Ages the Dark Ages , although the negative myth as we know it today is largely the legacy of romantic literature. Contents move to sidebar hide. Page Talk. Read Change Change source View history. Tools Tools.