Petrarch and the Love Lyric (Volume C)

• Petrarch

• classical influence

• civic duty

• love versus reward

• pastoral elements

Humanism and Poetry

Petrarch (1304–1374)

• Arezzo, Italy• Colonna family• Rime Sparse• Laura• sonnet form: octet

problem, sestet resolution

• a-b-b-a rhyme form

“Although I hope, without any doubt, to spill a river of your blood—indeed, I am certain I can, without shedding a drop of my own—what if you were to offer me peace? What if, all weapons laid aside, you too the path opened to a love match in bed?” (p. 177).

Interior/Exterior Life

Garcilaso de la Vega (ca. 1501–1536)

Louise Labé (1520–1566)

Veronica Franco (1546–1591)

• “I find, in light of how I lost my way,

I might have met a much more bitter fate” (Garcilasco, Sonnet 1)

• “Hard destiny makes me act like one who’s been stung by a scorpion but still hopes to heal” (Labé, Sonnet 1)

Emotion

Shakespeare (1564–1616)

sonnet form: • 16 lines• a-b-a-b rhyme pattern• problem: 3 quatrains• resolution: final

couplet• enjambment

• “Why with the time do I not glance aside

To new-found methods and to compounds strange?” (Sonnet 76)

• “O no! it is an ever-fixèd mark

That looks on tempests and is never shaken;

It is the star to every wandering bark” (Sonnet 116)

References

How do the lover and beloved represent, respectively, interior versus exterior life in humanist poems?

Discussion Questions

Humanist poets often employ classical elements and themes in their works. Which do you see presented in the cluster selection?

Discussion Questions

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The Norton Anthology Of World Literature.

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