History Commons^™

Review Essay: Petrarch, Francesco. Petrarch's Songbook: Rerum Vulgarium Fragmenta. A Verse Translation By James Wyatt Cook. Medieval & Renaissance Texts & Studies, Vol. 151, Joseph Rosenblum

Quidditas

Petrarch, Francesco. Petrarch's Songbook: Rerum Vulgarium Fragmenta. A Verse Translation by James Wyatt Cook. Medieval & Renaissance Texts & Studies, vol. 151. Medieval & Renaissance Texts & Studies, Binghamton, N.Y., 1995. 445 pp. $30.00

Petrarch's "Trionfo Dell'eternità": Aesthetics Of Conversion, John S. Smurthwaite

Quidditas

As the first of Petrarch's six Triumphs, the "Trionfo del Tempo," comes to an end, the poet affirms time's apparent victory over all things in the sublunar world. Not even fame is able to endure time's unrelenting and ultimately disintegrating onslought:

che è questo però che sì s'apprezza?

Tutto vince e ritoglie il Tempo avaro;

chiamasi Fama, ed è morir secondo,

ne più che contra 'l primo è alcun riparo;

così il Tempo trionfa i nomi e 'l mondo!

("Trionfo del Tempo," vvs. 141-45_

What is this that is so highly valued? Greedy Time overcomes and steals all away. …

Review Essay: Hans Baron, Petrarch's "Secretum": Its Making And Its Meaning, Ronnie H. Terpening

Quidditas

Hans Baron, Petrarch's "Secretum": Its Making and Its Meaning, Medieval Academy of America, 1985. $22.00

Chaucer And The Three Crowns Of Florence (Dante, Petrarch, And Boccaccio): Recent Comparative Scholarship, Madison U. Sowell

Quidditas

Chaucer and the Italian Trecento. Ed. Piero Boitani. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983. 313 p. $49.50.

Howard H. Schless, Chaucer and Dante: A Revaluation. Norman, OK: Pilgrim Books, 1984. 268 p. $85.00.

R. A. Shoaf, Dante, Chaucer, and the Currency of the World: Money, Images, and Reference in Late Medieval Poetry. Norman, OK: Pilgrim Books, 1983. 313 p. $39.95.

Petrarch's Rhetorical Reticentia As Politics, Lucia Re

Quidditas

A discussion of Petrarch's politics must take into account the historicity of politics itself: political science, as distinct from other disciplines, is generally believed to originate with Machiavelli. It would therefore be anti-historical to attribute to Petrarch a systematic political vision (as it is understood today). The modern claim for the independence of political theory and practice is as alien to Petrarch as the possibility of a theologically integrated political vision: Petrarch could not and would not have written either Il Prinicpe or Dante's De Monarchia. Nevertheless, I will speak of Petrarch's politics not only because, at a very …