Petrarch and the Petrarchan Tradition in Renaissance Literature and Thought

1
Petrarch and the Petrarchan Tradition in
Renaissance Literature and Thought
Petrarch and Laura, 1842 by Nicaise de Keyser
(Flemish)
Statue (19th century) of Petrarch, outside Uffizi
Gallery, Florence
Francesco Petrarca, ca.1450 by Andrea di Bartolo
di Bargilla
2
Humanist Thought in the Early RenaissanceA
Context for Petrarch Norton C, 2465-72

• What are some of the important features of the
  Renaissance?
• What broad changes in religion did the
  Renaissance witness?
• What are some important inventions of the
  Renaissance?
• What are some features that characterize the
  individual in Renaissance thought?
• What is humanism?
• What is Renaissance melancholy?
• What is lyric poetry?

3
What is the Renaissance?

• Renaissance is French for re-birth
• The Renaissance a term typically used to refer
  to a period in Early Modern Europe spanning
  approximately 1350 to 1650
• Shift in the vocabulary early modern
  (1350-1800CE) to emphasize continuity of ideas
• Different countries experienced their Renaissance
  at different times. Generally, the trend was
  northward. Italys Renaissance (14th century)
  occurred well before Englands Renaissance (16th
  century).
• The Renaissance is better understood through its
  features.

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Important features of the Renaissance?

• The Renaissance is conventionally understood as a
  flowering of the arts...
• that emerged from the questing, self-conscious
  individual (Damrosch 149)...
• who actively exploredand thus createdthe self
  and the world in which the self exists (Pasinetti
  and James 2468).
• Hencethe Reniassance encounter with the self
• A shift toward internal, mental, and
  psychological portraiture (2465)
• characters...enjoy greater autonomy and more
  fully realized personalities (2465)
• Deliberating with others and themselves about
  what to do seems at least as important...as
  putting their plans into action (2465)

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What are some important features of the
Renaissance?

• Renaissance authors, like the characters they
  invent, inhabited a world of such widespread
  revolutionary change that they could not
  passively receive the traditional wisdom of
  previous ages (Pasinetti and James 2465).
• In addition toand influencing the nature ofthe
  flowering of the arts, great changes were
  occurring during the Renaissance in the areas of
  
• Religion
• Technology and Science
• World Exploration and Discovery
• Bureaucratic and Institutional Power
• Economic and Social Power
• These changes were highly interrelated.

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Revolutionary Changes in Technology Science

• The map of the world was being redrawn by 1632,
  explorers had traveled to the western coast of
  South America
• The worlds center was no longer a function of
  religious power and primacy, but subordinated to
  mathematical precision (Damrosch 151).
• New inventionslike Galileos telescope,
  Gutenbergs printing press, and important means
  of navigationmade the previously unthinkable
  eminently possible.
• The quadrant enabled ships to travel from Europe
  to India and the New World (Damrosch 157). But
  gunpowder was also a new technology frequently
  put to use in less unifying ways (Damrosch 156).
• Influx of ancient knowledge from the Middle East
  reinvigorated engineering, architecture, science,
  and so on.
• Many of the greatest buildings in Europe were
  erected during this period, often to celebrate
  earthly powers and the dignity of man.

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Revolutionary Religious Social Changes

• This is a period of religious divisiveness.
  Violent protests about religion occurred,
  sparking Martin Luthers Reformation (of the
  Catholic Church and its means of maintaining
  absolute power over the people).
• Many religious sects left to find colonies and
  schools in other parts of the world These new
  wanderings were concerted efforts to win souls
  for Christ and to acquire gold, bread baskets,
  and new subjects for Europes sovereign states
  (Damrosch 151). This also created uncertainty and
  debate, which we'll read about.
• Such divisiveness was a part of the age's
  preoccupation with this life rather than with
  the life beyond (2468).
• For Renaissance intellectuals and for the
  literary characters they created, there was
  almost literally no firm ground to stand on as
  they moved through life in an increasingly
  complex and uncertain world (2466).

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Religious Social Changes

• Such preoccupation with this life rather than
  with the life beyond (2468) meant that in
  general, the presence of God...is conspicuously
  less dominating (2469) in the literature of the
  period.
• See the dignity of man and humanity's
  privileged position in creation (2471)
• More accurately, artists and intellectuals were
  struggling with the conflict between the values
  of worldly goods and...the religious conviction
  in the transitory nature of earthly possessions
  (2469). The value of acquisition, its effects on
  self, neighbor, society here and elsewhere.
• This divisive and uncertain religious temper of
  the age is expressed in its art, where the
  earthly and the spiritual are often intermixed
  (2470).
• Petrarch's poems, for instance, reflects a
  complex treatment of earthly and spiritual desire.

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The Printing Press as an Agent of Change (E.
Eisenstein)

• The printing press was an instrument for
  intellectual deliberation and the dissemination
  of ideas (Pasinetti and James 2466).
• In fact, the invention of the printing press
  facilitated the religious divisiveness of the
  Early Modern period.
• Spurring the Reformation and much cultural and
  religious divisiveness, the printing press also
  allowed people to participate in a republic of
  letters (Pasinetti and James 2467).
• With the expanded availability of the press came
  education and increasing levels of literacy. Men
  and women could publish their works, something
  unthinkable before the advent of print. For many
  more people, writing became simply one aspect
  ofdaily activities (Damrosch 159).
• Public circulation of literature fueled the
  emerging sense of self we call Renaissance
  individualism.

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So... How can we understand this historical
cultural context?What are some of the important
features of the Early Modern period?
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Increasing Individualism

Worldly Goods

Artistic Invention
Arts

Spiritual Goods
Urbanization
Bureaucratization of the state
Renaissance Melancholy
Merchant Classes
Invention Re/discovery
Humanism Spiritual Dignity
of Human Work
Trade
Balance of Power
Travel/Exploration
Religious Divisiveness
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The Ambassadors, by Hans Holbein (1533) In what
ways does this painting encapsulate the
Renaissance?
13
The Renaissance Individual

• Deliberate encounter with the selfand with the
  other as other self, both like and unlike me.
• The Renaissance individual characterized by a
  singularly high capacity for feeling the delight
  of earthly achievement (2471), and literature of
  the period delves in to the sensuous
  pleasuresand the questionsof individual,
  earthly experience.
• This is in contrast with the ideal individual of
  the Medieval period who sees life on earth as
  mere preparation for the eternal life after death
  (2468)
• Attention to the here-and-now reflected in the
  Renaissance code of behavior (2468) our
  manners and the specific form of our actions
  carry meaning
• Balance of power began to move towards the
  cities urbanization, commerce, conversation and
  exchange of ideas

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Humanism

• Renaissance connotes a general notion of
  artistic creativity, of extraordinary zest for
  life and knowledge, of sensory delight in
  opulence and magnificence, of spectacular
  individual achievement (2466).
• The Renaissance assumption is that there are
  things highly worth doing, within a strictly
  temporal pattern namely, the proper exercise of
  political power, the act of scientific discovery,
  the creation of works of art. By doing them,
  humanity proves its privileged position in
  creation... (Pasinetti and James 2471).
• The phrase the dignity of man refers to this
  positive, strongly affirmed awareness of the
  intellectual and physical 'virtues' of the human
  being, and of the individual's place in creation
  (2471).
• Specifically, spectacular individual human
  achievement, most frequently visible in human
  productionsthe arts and sciences, the classics
  that were reborn after the so-called Dark Ages
• The people who, starting at about the middle of
  the fourteenth century, gave new impulse to this
  emulation of the classics are often referred to
  as humanists.
• The word...is related to what we call the
  humanities, and the humanities at that time
  referred to the study of Latin and Greek texts
  (2467).

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Renaissance Melancholy

• The Renaissance coincided with, and perhaps to
  some extent occasioned, a loss of firm belief in
  the final unity and the final intelligibility of
  the universe (2471)
• With the profound belief in the capacity and
  ability of the individual, and the delight in
  earthly accomplishment, there comes the question
  of its ultimate worth (Pasinetti and James
  2471)
• If the here-and-now is held up as the proper
  province of human study and action, then how do
  we judge the value and purpose of all this
  activity?
• Once the notion of this grand unity of design
  has lost its authority, certainty about the final
  value of human actions is no longer to be found.
  For some minds...the sense of void becomes so
  strong as to paralyze...aspiration to power,
  thirst for knowledge, or delight in beauty--this
  paradox results in an attitude often referred to
  as Renaissance melancholy (2471)
• Also results in a modern sense of alienation
  (2476), as experienced by Petrarchhe is an
  alienated, isolated voice speaking into a void,
  trying to capture some concrete idea but always
  failingbeautifully.

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The Anatomy of Melancholy (1621), by Robert
Burton
The Anatomy is a vast tome that, under the
metaphor of the self as world, discusses the
whole of human thought and emotion. Burton's
interests range from medicine, love, and
philosophy to monsters, geography, and
exploration. He uses all the scientific and
philosophical topics of the Renaissance to help
him understand himself. He rewrote and revised
throughout his life. Its first edition was around
900 pages, and its digressive, sprawling
stylereminiscent of Montaigne'ssuggests that
the book, its writer, and its readers were
conversing with each other. A grand example of
Renaissance humanismits highs, and its lows.
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Francesco Petrarca (Petrach)1304-1374

• Contemporary of Dante and Boccacio (late Medieval
  period)
• But considered the first modern poet and the
  Father of Humanism
• Most famous for his lyric poetry in the
  vernacular (Italian, rather than Latin, important
  because more people could read and understandnot
  just the educated, scholastic elite)
• Set the standard for Renaissance lyric poetry,
  which is primarily characterized by a desire to
  interrogate and understand the self, the
  humanthis same desire also visible in his
  letters and essays
• Petrarch bequeathed to later humanists the hope
  that scholar-poets might one day be recognized as
  shaping forces of the nation-state (Pasinetti
  and James 2476).

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Lyric Poetry

• The word lyric comes from the word lyre, a
  musical instrument
• lyric poetry is known for its musicality and
  particularly its poetic exploration of
  interiority.
• Unlike narrative or epic poetry, lyric poetry
  does not tell a story in the conventional
  sensethough there is content to the poems.
• Lyric poetry tends to be more impressionistic
  than plot-based, focusing on states of being
  rather than outcomes.
• Sometimes, but not always, the spiritual and the
  earthly (the numinal and the physical) are
  mingled in lyric poetry.
• A technique central to humanist thought and
  methodology, this mingling of the numinal and the
  physical it is not only present in Western
  poetry, but in Eastern lyric poetry as well (the
  bakhti or devotional poems of Tukaram and Kabir,
  for instance).

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Lyric Poetry

• Important forms of lyric poetry are sonnets
  (which themselves come in different forms), odes,
  and elegies. The sonnet tradition is perhaps most
  central to the development of lyric poetry in the
  Renaissance.
• Francis Petrarch, an Italian poet often called
  the Father of Humanism (fl.1300s), popularized
  the sonnet form with his Rime Sparse (or
  scattered rhymes also called Fragments in the
  Vernacular), a sequence of lyric poems mingling
  spiritual love with earthly love in which the
  poetic speaker praises his beloved, Laura.
  Petrarch's sonnets tried to represent human love
  in human termsusing spiritual themes, but in the
  service of explaining or examining something
  earthly.
• He is often celebrated for his use of lyric
  realismrealistic only insofar as it contrasts
  with the highly conventional and often clichéd
  language frequently used by courtly poets and
  troubadours, which depended on traditional and
  formulaic expressions (and variations from them)
  in order to convey meaning. By Shakespeare's
  time, though, even Petrarch would seem clichéd.
  Petrarch was highly influential, and his
  innovations became hallmarks of Renaissance
  humanism.

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Lyric Poetry

• Less absolute in its conventions, Renaissance
  lyric poetry depends for its meaning on evocative
  and unexpected associations between images,
  words, and ideas. Such poetry cultivates an
  intimate relationship between the poem, the poet,
  and the reader.
• Often uses the first person (me, the self)
• Petrarchan motifs and themes
• Love that burns, love that destroys
• The uncertain self, the self at odds with
  himself
• Beloved is idealized, more than human, angelic
  
• Earthly love is spiritualized, spiritual love is
  embodied.

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The Ascent of Mount VentouxGenre slightly
fictionalized letter

• What, most broadly, happens in this letter? What
  story does it tell?
• A motif is a repeated image that seems to have an
  important resonance in the text. What important
  motifs can you find in this letter?
• Why do you think Petrarch take the winding path?
• Petrarch calls this choice a mistake (2481)
  that he made three times. In what ways might
  the choice not be a mistake, but a good thing?
• What important features of Renaissance thought
  are evident in this letter?
• Keeping those important features of Renaissance
  thought in mind, return to the motifs you
  discovered. What might these motifs be metaphors
  for?
• Why do you think the letter is a good genre or
  form for this writing? You might start by
  considering what a letter is.

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Petrarch, Rime 78
Quando giunse a Simon l'alto concetto ch'a mio
nome gli pose in man lo stile, s'avesse dato a
l'opera gentile colla figura voce ed
intellecto, di sospir' molti mi sgombrava il
petto, che ciò ch'altri à piú caro, a me fan
vile però che 'n vista ella si mostra
humile promettendomi pace ne l'aspetto. Ma poi
ch'i' vengo a ragionar co llei, benignamente
assai par che m'ascolte, se risponder savesse a'
detti miei. Pigmalïon, quanto lodar ti dêi de
l'imagine tua, se mille volte n'avesti quel ch'i'
sol una vorrei.
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Petrarch, Rime 78
Simone Martini (fl. 1315-1344) The Annunciation
and Two Saints (detail, Mary) 1333 Tempera on
wood Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence While
Martini's portrait of Laura has been lost, the
painter's stylistic signature is consistent. This
image of the Virgin Mary suggests how Martini
might have painted the Laura of Petrarch's rimes.
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Petrarch, Rime 78
Jean-Léon Gérôme (1824-1904) Pymalion and
Galatea, c. 1890 Oil on Canvas Metropolitan
Museum of Art In Rime 78, Petrarch invokes the
classical image of Pygmalion from Ovid's
Metamorphoses Pygmalion, how glad you should be
of your statue (9). The poetic speaker goes on
to clarify why Pygmalion should be glad of his
creation, arguing that the mythological artist
received a thousand times the embraces and
other human interaction that the speaker
yearns to have just once! (10). Who was
Pygmalion, and what can we learn about the poet's
treatment of Laura from the classical allusion?
25
World Exploration Discovery

• In the wake of religious divisiveness, many
  religious sects left to find colonies and schools
  in other parts of the world (Puritans left
  England for Plymouth Rock during the time of the
  Reformation, for example). religion
• These new wanderings were concerted efforts to
  win souls for Christ and to acquire gold, bread
  baskets, and new subjects for Europes sovereign
  states (151). bureaucratic/institutional
  class religion
• The Ottoman Empire was on the rise Christian
  Constantinople became Islamic Istanbul. The old
  spice route that had enabled enterprising
  merchants such as Marco Polo to pass through
  Turkey, Afghanistan, India, and even China closed
  down, forcing other traders to find new routes to
  the Indies. Columbuss misguided pursuit of a new
  spice route to Asia led him instead to new
  worlds (152) technology/science
  bureacratic/institutional religion
• As the Ottoman Empire spread, Greek-speaking
  scholars from the Byzantine Empire fled to
  Western Europebringing with them the Greek
  legacy of antiquity Plato, Homer, Sappho, Greek
  tragedians, Aristotleall became newly available
  to scholars and, eventually, the general reader
  (152) science/technology/education/printing
  press flowering of culture
• The rediscovery of classical and Arabic
  scientific methods enabled the development of new
  technology that, in turn, spurred more
  exploration. science/technology

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Bureaucratic Institutional Power

• During the Renaissance, countries became less
  loose clusters of autonomous towns and courts
  and more a number of duchies and extensions of
  foreign empire (151) religion
  travel/exploration
• Powerful nation states began to emerge, with
  equally powerful means of establishing their
  authority. Improved record-keeping, improved
  methods of surveillance (159). science/technology
  
• Balance of power began to move towards the
  cities urbanization
• New kingdoms led to increasing military might.
  England and Poland became formidable monarchies
  in the 15th century Spain, with the marriage of
  Ferdinand and Isabella, became a powerful
  military presence (151). travel/exploration
• But, this period also saw the first modern war
  of national liberation when theprovinces of the
  Netherlands rose up against Spain (152).
• In England, the civil wars and internal
  rebellions of the early 17th century would
  culminate in the execution of Charles I in 1649
  (152). religion
• While the leaders of the Reformation sought to
  disseminate power to the people through
  individual study and education, this was also
  seen as a rebellion causing the authorities to
  impose their will (Counter-Reformation,
  legislative and executive action taken against
  religious dissenters)

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Class Economic Social Power

• With the increase in travel, exploration, and
  discovery came an increase in the value of the
  merchant class exploration/discovery
• This sea change, however, was not welcomed by
  all, and it did not begin in the Renaissance.
• Vigorous social and economic changes began in the
  Middle Ages, when energetic merchants and
  prosperous guild members challenged the ways in
  which a mans worth was valued did it depend on
  bloodline and clerical privilege, or could honest
  labor and thrifty behavior pay a major part?
  (153). religious secularization
• In many ways, the Renaissance reaped what the
  Middle Ages had sown.
• New markets opened up by the Crusades fueled
  urbanization and commercial activity
  bureaucratic/institutional exploration/discover
  y
• Black death in 1348 put a temporary end to the
  commercial growth and economic expansion of the
  late Middle Ages and early Renaissance until the
  16th century, when the treasures of the New World
  came back to the Old, Europe was characterized by
  depression and inflation (153)
• Black death (a disease, like smallpox and
  syphillis, indebted to increased travel 157)
  seriously hindered population growth perhaps the
  merchant classes were needed now, more than ever,
  to reinvigorate the national coffers?
  bureaucratic/institutional travel/exploration

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Increasing Individualism

Worldly Goods

Arts

Spiritual Goods
Urbanization
Received Wisdom and Dogma
Bureaucratization of the state
Merchant Classes
Invention Re/discovery
Humanism Spiritual Dignity
of Human Work
Trade
Balance of Power
Travel/Exploration
Religious Divisiveness
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Religious Divisiveness
Travel/Exploration
Worldly Goods
Urbanization
Trade
Spiritual
Goods
Arts
Humanism Spiritual Dignity
of Human Work
Invention Re/discovery
Aristocracy
Balance of Power
Received Wisdom And Dogma
Bureaucracy
Merchant Classes