Petrarchan Love and the Continental Renaissance

The 366 lyrics of Petrarchs Canzoniere exert a unique influence in literary history. From the mid-fifteenth century to the early seventeenth, the poems are imitated in every major language of western Europe, and for a time they provide Renaissance Europe with an almost exclusive sense of what love poetry should be. In this stimulating look at the international phenomenon of Petrarchs poetry, Gordon Braden focuses on materials in languages other than EnglishItalian, French, and Spanish, with brief citations from Croatian and Cypriot Greek, among others. Braden closely examines Petrarchs theme of love for an impossible object of desire, a theme that captivated and inspired across centuries, societies, and languages. The book opens with a fresh interpretation of Petrarchs sequence, in which Braden defines the poets innovations in the context of his predecessors, Dante and the troubadours. The author then examines how Petrarchan predispositions affect various strains of Renaissance literature: prose narrative, verse narrative, and, primarily, lyric poetry. In the final chapter, Braden turns to the poetry of Sor Juana Ins de la Cruz to demonstrate a sophisticated case of Petrarchism taken to one of its extremes within the walls of a convent in seventeenth-century Mexico.