Petrarch – författare

The 'Canzoniere', a sequence of sonnets and other verse forms, were written over a period of about 40 years. They describe Petrarch's intense love for Laura, whom he first met in Avignon in 1327, and her effect on him after she died in 1348. The collection is an examination of the poet's growing spiritual crisis, and also explores important contemporary issues such as the role of the papacy and religion.

The 'Canzoniere', a sequence of sonnets and other verse forms, were written over a period of about 40 years. They describe Petrarch's intense love for Laura, whom he first met in Avignon in 1327, and her effect on him after she died in 1348. The collection is an examination of the poet's growing spiritual crisis, and also explores important contemporary issues such as the role of the papacy and religion.

Petrarch’s Canzoniere stands as one of the greatest and most influential collections of love poetry ever written. Expressing his unrequited devotion for Laura–with whom the young poet fell in love at first sight–the Canzoniere explores the tension between Petrarch’s earthly desire and his spiritual longing for divine grace. In this monumental translation, the project of a lifetime, renowned poet A.M. Juster preserves the original text’s formal elegance, honouring Petrarch’s rhyme and meter while also capturing the profound religious and philosophical undertones that imbue the work. Unlike earlier translations that framed the Canzoniere as mere “troubadour poetry”, this version highlights its classical roots and modern sensibility. Juster, a celebrated poet and translator, brings Petrarch’s vision to life with precision and grace, offering a rendition that is both faithful to the original and eminently accessible to contemporary readers.

Petrarch was not the first man to find a certain contradiction between his desires and the possibilities of life around him, and to pass many years under the pain of contrary attractions that could not all be followed to fulfilment This conflict is what gives interest to the Secretum. Some have thought, and the idea was expressed by one of his correspondents, that his love for Laura was very much of a literary pose. Yet that such a view is an insufficient account of it seems pretty clearly established by the work here translated. It is, indeed, plain that his feelings ran a course, and not a smooth one, and did not continue in one stay; he came to see the whole matter in a changed light, and yet not wholly changed; his relation was transfigured, not abandoned, and after the death of Laura, which took place when he was forty-four, it continued as a memory from which the pain had faded away and only what was uplifting remained.That which persisted unchanged all through his life and seems most to have had the colour and substance of a passion was the love of Letters. To this his friendship, his very real patriotism, and (must we not add?) his religion also were in a sense second. But the mention of this last factor in the life of Petrarch leads one to express the opinion that this has not yet been quite sufficiently reckoned with. That it should not have been thought worthy of such reckoning has probably arisen from the one ugly fact in his life which he himself does not conceal, and indeed expressly refers to in his "Letter to Posterity."

Petrarch fashioned so many different versions of himself for posterity that it is an exacting task to establish where one might start to explore. . . . Hainsworth's study meets this problem through examples of what Petrarch wrote, and does so decisively and succinctly. . . . [A] careful and unpretentious book, penetrating in its organization and treatment of its subject, gentle in its guidance of the reader, nimble and dexterous in its scholarly infrastructure—and no less profound for those qualities of lightness. The translations themselves are a delight, and are clearly the result of profound meditation and extensive experiment. . . . The Introduction and the notes to each work form a clear plexus of support for the reader, with a host of deft cross-references. --Richard Mackenny, Binghamton University, State University of New York

Petrarch fashioned so many different versions of himself for posterity that it is an exacting task to establish where one might start to explore. . . . Hainsworth's study meets this problem through examples of what Petrarch wrote, and does so decisively and succinctly. . . . [A] careful and unpretentious book, penetrating in its organization and treatment of its subject, gentle in its guidance of the reader, nimble and dexterous in its scholarly infrastructure—and no less profound for those qualities of lightness. The translations themselves are a delight, and are clearly the result of profound meditation and extensive experiment. . . . The Introduction and the notes to each work form a clear plexus of support for the reader, with a host of deft cross-references. --Richard Mackenny, Binghamton University, State University of New York