Wednesday, March 21, 2018

Kara on Petrarch

Francesco Petrarca (Kara Beasley)


Francesco Petrarca (Petrarch) was born in Arezzo, Italy on July 20, 1304. We know him today as “The Father of Humanism.” He was an Italian poet and scholar who based most of his poems on a woman named Laura who was his idealized beloved and these poems contributed to the Renaissance flowering of lyric poetry. He loved classical artists and this love inspired him to travel because of it. He visited men of learning and searching monastic libraries for classical manuscripts. Petrarch’s father was a lawyer who was forced to leave Florence in order to find a job and ended up in Avignon in 1312. Several years after Petrarch was born. Once Petrarch was old enough, his father had him study law and he moved back to Italy with his brother in 1320, where started to develop ‘an unquenchable thirst for literature.” His earliest poems were about his mother’s death and he started to become acquainted with vernacular poetry, where he moved back to Avignon and became associated with Cardinal Giovanni Colonna. Later he met his beloved Laura who he kept secret about her status because he felt that was unimportant. From this love, his most celebrated Italian poems sprang forth, which despised as mere trifles, he revised them throughout his life. He then was invited by Paris and Rome to be crowned poet and chose Rome in order to celebrate the rebirth of the cult of poetry. He wrote Secretum Meum in 1342-43 which was an autobiographical treatise consisting of three dialogues between Petrarch and St. Augustine talking about even if you are absorbed in yourself and others around you, a man might still find his way to God. Petrarch love for Laura made him realize that he had love for the creature rather than the creator which was proof to his attachment of the world. Because of this, he broke through his too-exclusive admiration for antiquity to admit to other authoritative voices. He wrote De Vita Solitaria as an example of this where developed the theoretical basis and description of the “solitary life” where a man can enjoy nature and study together with those of prayer. He died July 18/19, 1374 in Padua, Italy.

Sources:
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Petrarch#ref5637

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