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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.
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.
Apr 2, 2024 · His Canzoniere —a sequence of poems including 317 sonnets, addressed to his idealized beloved, Laura—established and perfected the Petrarchan (or Italian) sonnet, which remains one of the two principal sonnet forms, as well as the one most widely used. The other major form is the English (or Shakespearean) sonnet.
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Jan 24, 2020 · Petrarca also known as Petrarch, the man who began the Italian Renaissance – was a love-sick fool! Petrarca literally wrote the book on infatuation, penning more than 300 Italian sonnets dedicated to his object of passion “Laura.”. His verses, soon gave rise to a whole generation of imitators all over Europe, particularly in England ...
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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...
Laura de Noves. Born. c. 1310. 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]
Laura de Noves died during the Black Death plague of 1348. The first 263 poems Petrarch wrote for her while she was alive and he called them Rime in Vita Laura. After she died, the poems he wrote were known as Rime in Morte Laura. His love for Laura was unconsummated. Petrarch wrote about this love:
