ABSTRACT
The influence of Petrarch, which was strong in the “trattato d’amore,” was still more dominant in the huge lyric literature of the sixteenth century. The fashionable idolatry of the “Rime” was so blind that it reacted disastrously on weaker talents, and was generally rather a hindrance than an inspiration, even to the most gifted. Most of the treatise writers already discussed further embodied their theories in verse, and what is true of the “trattato” is also broadly true of the lyric. The poems, with few exceptions, fall into several fairly well-defined groups. There are a number of early love poems, addressed to an unknown lady, Petrarchan in style, but far more vigorous than the bulk of sixteenth-century lyrics; and a series, much later in date but of very similar character, addressed to “una donna altiera.” The eyes enamoured of beauty and the soul eager for salvation are, indeed, set upon different aspects of the same reality.
