ABSTRACT

Leaving to others, if they think it worth while, to investigate the use of this topic in various ephemeral panegyrics by late Latin and medieval Latin poets, I will now turn to Petrarch, whose influence, direct or indirect, upon all Renaissance sonneteers was so inescapable and, to a considerable extent, determining. I cannot claim to have noticed every passage in his sonnets and canzoni where he speaks of the fame which his poetry has achieved, or may achieve, for Laura and for himself, but those which I have noticed among the 366 poems of the Canzoniere, and which I will briefly mention, are remarkably few and, for the most part, so modest and tremulous and muted that they might easily escape attention, and perhaps few students of Petrarch who had not been attentively looking for them would be able to remember that they were there. Shakespeare's treatments of this topic form an unforgettable and inseparable portion of our total impression of his sonnets, but Petrarch's require to be pointed out and do not significantly modify our total impression of the Canzoniere. Since few poets have thought more about posthumous fame than did Petrarch, ‘the laureat poetë’, as Chaucer called him, this might at first sight seem surprising, but there are, I think, two convincing explanations. In the first place, Petrarch's hopes of poetic immortality were based, not upon his vernacular, but upon his Latin poetry; and, in the second place (and perhaps far more importantly), the whole tradition, the whole manner of thinking and feeling, behind his poetry to and about Laura was absolutely incompatible with anything like resonant self-confidence or boastfulness. For Petrarch may be regarded as the first great populariser of that characteristic combination of Courtly Love and partly philosophic, partly Christian, idealism, unworldliness, and ‘spirituality’ which had been more reconditely expressed by Dante and some of his early Italian predecessors.