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Apr 2, 2024 · Laura, the beloved of the Italian poet Petrarch and the subject of his love lyrics, written over a period of about 20 years, most of which were included in his Canzoniere, or Rime. Laura has traditionally been identified as Laura de Noves of Avignon (now in France), a married woman and a mother;
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Apr 21, 2021 · With good reason the fourteenth-century Tuscan poet Petrarch is the sonnet’s exemplar. In fact, he’s often erroneously understood as its creator. Petrarch penned Il Canzoniere , a sequence of 366 poems—the vast majority of which are sonnets—dedicated to his idealized love Laura de Noves.
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When did Petrarch see Laura?
Died. 1348. Laura de Noves (c. 1310–1348) was the wife of Count Hugues de Sade (ancestor of the Marquis de Sade ). It has been speculated that she may be the Laura of Petrarch 's poetry, but this remains unproven. [1] [2]
In 1327, Petrarch attended a mass in Avignon and saw Laura de Noves, for the first time. Laura, though her true identity has yet to be confirmed, would become the primary subject of his poetry for the rest of his life. Petrarch continued to travel around Europe...
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Petrarch’s Laura
At the center of the Canzoniere is the enigmatic figure of Laura, whose beauty, chastity, and unattainableness inspired most of Petrarch’s Italian poems. Several attempts have been made to identify a real-life “Laura”; at one point, she was believed to be Laura de Noves, an ancestress of the Marquis de Sade. But these attempts ultimately proved fruitless, leading some to speculate that Laura was wholly a creation of the imagination. Petrarch, however, assured at least one skeptical friend, Gi...
The courtly love tradition
The poems in the Canzoniere reflect the established mode of courtly love, which originated in France in the late eleventh century. As celebrated by the troubadours and poets from the Provençal region in southern France, I’amour courtois challenged and redefined Christian ideals of love, marriage, virtue, masculinity, and femininity. Powerful nobles, such as Eleanor of Aquitaineand Marie de Champagne, patronized these troubadours, with the result that the philosophy of courtly love soon spread...
The Avignon papacy
While most of the poems in the Canzoniereare romantic in nature, Petrarch also condemns—in a handful of sonnets—the religious politics of his time, especially those of the papal court in Avignon, the French city where Petrarch lived and worked for several years. Nor was he the only one of his contemporaries to do so. In 1309 the papacy moved from Rome—the longtime, official center of the pontiff—to Avignon. After asserting his supremacy to all Christian rulers in a papal bull (an official pro...
The contents
Petrarch’s Canzoniere consists of 366 lyric poems: 317 sonnets, 29 canzoni, 9 sestinas, 7 ballads, and 4 madrigals. At one point, a manuscript of the Canzoniere was divided in two parts, one, including 263 poems, headed “in vita di madonna Laura” (During the Life of Madonna Laura) and the other, including 103 poems, entitled “in morte di madonna Laura” (During the Death of Madonna Laura). Another critic divides the poems into three categories: poems about Laura, poems that attempt to reject h...
THE PETRARCHAN SONNET
Petrarch did not invent the sonnet (a 14-line lyric poem written in iambic pentameter, with an interlocking rhyme scheme). He, however, became inextricably associated with this type of poem to the point where the Italian form also became known as the Petrarchan sonnet. The Italian sonnet consists of an octave (eight lines), followed by a sestet (six lines). Usually there is a break between the two around the ninth line of the poem, sometimes known as the volra, or “turn”: the octave sets fort...
The spread of Petrarchism
After Petrarch’s death, the poems of his Canzonierecirculated in a variety of incarnations, not merely in their original manuscript form, but in neo-Latin and vernacular translations and musical adaptations. Petrarch had inadvertently established a tradition of love poetry that would be admired and imitated for several centuries. Appropriately known as Petrarchism, this tradition found adherents not only in Italy but in other European countries as well. The conventions of Petrarchan love poet...
Abrams, M. H., ed. The Norton Anthology of English Literature. Vol. 1. New York: W. W. Norton, 1986. Braden, Gordon. Petrarchan Love and the Continental Renaissance. New Haven: Yale UniversityPress, 1999. D’Amico, Jack, ed. Petrarch in England. Ravenna: Longo, 1979. Foscolo, Ugo. Essays on Petrarch. London: John Murray, 1823. Foster, Kenelm. Petrar...
Noves, Laure de (1308–1348) Beloved of Petrarch. Name variations: Laure de Noves; Laura de Novalis; Laura de Noyes; Madame de Sale. Born in 1308; died of the plague in Avignon, France, on April 6, 1348; daughter of Audibert de Noves of Avignon; married Hugues de Sale of Avignon; children: eleven.
Laura, the woman who inspired Petrarch's poetry, remains a mystery. Scholars have debated her true identity, with some suggesting she was Laura de Noves, a married woman whom Petrarch first saw in a church in Avignon, France. Regardless of her true identity, Laura became the embodiment of idealized beauty and divine love in Petrarch's verses.
