Petrarch's Idea of Love

Petrarch's Idea of Love

HUMA 1125

On Petrarch's sonnets and how to read them, watch the YouTube video below.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k9TxPMq_pY0

I hope you watched the video because what comes next is a short quiz on Petrarch's Laura and his sonnets in general

3,2,1...

Multiple Choice

On a Good Friday, 1327, Petrarch.....

• Met Laura

• Saw Laura

• Wrote the first poem

• Lamented Laura's death

Multiple Choice

Which sonnet talks about Petrarch seeing Laura for the first time

• 1

• 3

• 7

• 15

Open Ended

Write at least 3 Petrarchan conventions.

Multiple Choice

Petrarch was found dead by his daughter......?

• In his bed

• At his desk

• On the floor

• None of the above

Good job!

Now, let's summarize some key info here

Who was Laura and where

did Petrarch meet her?

It is documented that Petrarca first caught sight of Laura, on April 6, 1327 in the church of Sainte-Claire d’Avignon, after Easter Mass. The true identity of Laura is not certain, as Petrarca never mentions her last name. He only describes here as: lovely to look at, fair-haired, modest, and dignified in bearing. It is surmised the mysterious Laura, was the wife of the Count Hugues de Sade (an ancestor of the Marquis de Sade). If indeed the object of Petrarch’s affections is Laura de Sade — the woman was married at the age of 15, and by the time Petrarca saw her, was already a wife and mother of several children.

The Sonnets' structure

Composed of 366 poems, mostly sonnets—fourteen-line poems of iambic pentameter, usually with the abbaabba cdecde rhyme scheme that Petrarch perfected—the Canzoniere is a roughly narrative recounting of the influence that a woman named Laura had on Petrarch. The sequence was composed over a number of years, the entire collection being completed near the end of Petrarch’s life. The unique contribution of the sequence is that the lyrics in it are combined in such a way as to create a sense of narrative unity and to focus the reader’s attention on the voice of the poet, a presence at once unifying and individualizing. The sequence itself is divided into two main sections: poems 1 to 266 about Laura in life and 267 to 366 about Laura after death, the final poem taking the reader beyond human time and Laura’s death into heaven and eternity.

Who influenced Petrarch?

Besides its purely structural aspects, the Canzoniere is significant for the ways in which it ties together the three poetic strands that influenced Petrarch: classical Latin poetry, Romance (predominantly French) literature, and Augustinian meditation. From the classics Petrarch derived many of his conventional topoi (a topos is a type of recurrent poetic formula, such as the poet speaking outside his beloved’s door), his secularity, his pastoral vision of the landscape, and, above all, his urbane accommodation of much of Ovid’s language. From the Romance tradition, he assimilated the cultivated poetic and cultural sensibilities of Provence, the aristocratic worldview. Finally, from Augustinianism he developed his confessional and introspective voice, aristocratic and personal, tortured and inspired—that unites the Canzoniere.

What are the major themes?

The Canzoniere develops three major themes, all interrelated—the meaning of Laura, the nature of the external landscape, and the question of time. For the speaker of the poem, the character of Laura goes well beyond any particular woman whom Petrarch may have seen in church on Good Friday, 1327. Through the Canzoniere her significance changes constantly. At times, she seems to be the historical person whom Petrarch saw, as in sonnet 3. Other times she becomes linked to the laurel crown of poetic fame, and as such she becomes suggestive of the poet’s own quest for glory and fame (which ended in his being crowned poet laureate). Again, she becomes linked to the idea of poetic inspiration and moral guidance (Petrarch often puns on Laura’s name, l’aura meaning “breeze,” a traditional symbol of poetic inspiration), much like Beatrice did for Dante.

The main theme in sonnet 1

The main theme of "Canzoniere" Petrarch set out in the first, introductory sonnet. It is a story of a mature man and his confused feelings, that he had undergone a long time ago, in his youth time. The theme of the entire book is love for Laura, high, clean, impetuous, but timid and unrequited. Petrarch hopes his sonnets would meet sympathy and compassion. He hopes to awaken in readers the very same feelings, which he is himself ashamed of now. Petrarch in his Sonnets is looking at his feelings of love analyzing it from the side, for now, years later, he "is not the same kind of who he used to be." The book tells of the pain of rejected love, unfulfilled hopes, but the passion never spills on the surface. Petrarch is not poured into the overflowing feelings, he reminisces about past love.

Sonnet 1

“At the time of my juvenile mistake (the love for Laura) when I was partially different from who I am now (only partially because neither then was he totally subject to love's passion, nor now has he rid himself of it completely) if there is somebody who knows what love is. I hope to find not only forgiveness but also compassion for the different ways in which I complain and talk, switching between hopes and pains which are equally vain. The result of losing myself to vain passions is shame, and, as a consequence, my repentance." Now Petrarch, through his rhetoric call, his confession, his shame and his using reason, seeks not so much the common people’s forgiveness as simply their approval. Also this procedure (oscillation between an undifferentiated addressee and a privileged interlocutor, another self) is characteristic of the whole Canzoniere. Petrarch in this sonnet takes the stoic stance towards Love, a position that he takes in many other works. His stoicism promoted the individualistic ideal of the wise man who lives following nature, in a state of perfect rationality, freeing himself from the mundane passions (apathy) in order to follow the only true God

The war and battle imagery in Sonnet 3

Petrarch uses capture as a metaphor for being in love, because his attention has been captured by the eyes of a woman to whom he is attracted. He describes himself as being "unarmed" and unprepared for a struggle, and he describes himself as passively accepting the "blows" or attacks of love. The arrow in the poem is a reference to the Roman deity Cupid, who supposedly caused people to fall in love by shooting them with magic arrows.

Sonnet 16

Petrarch's sonnet 16 can be seen as embodying of his beloved Laura, as the author compares her with the goddess. He seeks meetings with her as "… to gaze on the image of Him whom he hopes to see again in heaven”. Petrarch’s love for Laura was hot and pure, full of deep respect. At the same time, we can trace the poet's despair to the meeting with his beloved woman in the sonnet. So there are two different attitudes to women in this sonnet, as embodying her to the goddess and understanding her human nature: ones are treated as an object of inspiration, platonic love, and the others - as an object of passion, and quenching some carnal man's desires. His purely beloved Laura represents the first type:"...following his desire, to gaze on the image of Him, whom he hopes to see again in heaven.

Sonnet 90

Here, Petrarch expresses two main ideas about love: one is that his love for Laura does not fade over time and as she ages; the second is that his love for her is painful because it is not returned.  Petrarch's first idea -- that Laura remains beautiful and desirable to him over the years -- is conveyed mostly through physical descriptions of Laura, using imagery and figurative language. Stanza one (lines 1-4) provide a good example of imagery: "Upon the breeze she spread her golden hair that in a thousand gentle knots was turned and the sweet light beyond all radiance burned in eyes where now that radiance is rare." Here, Petrarch describes Laura's hair blowing in the wind in a way that allows readers to picture the image. This excerpt also ends with a contrast -- Petrarch notes that Laura's eyes no longer show the same "radiance" they did when she was younger. 

Sonnet 126

Petrarch's sonnet 126 is crammed full of metaphors but there are a couple that sticks out. The metaphors focus is to convince the reader that the woman he desires is beyond perfection. Through the use of metaphors, Petrarch sonnet 126 shows how his poetry idealizes Laura.

The first of the metaphors that is the clearest example of his obsession is when he describes her as a “divine beauty.” With this metaphor, he is clearly comparing Laura beauty to that of a goddess. Petrarch is trying to place Laura in a league of her own by comparing her to a goddess. It becomes clear that he focuses only on Laura because of her attractiveness. In relation to life now, comparing someone to a god is something that you most often do not hear. 

Now, it's time for you to write a short commentary (a paragraph or two) on two sonnets of your choice. The ones you liked the most.

You have 5 min to write per sonnet

Open Ended

Your first sonnet to analyse....

Open Ended

Your second sonnet to analyse....

Thank you for your hard work!

:)

I HOPE YOU ENJOYED THE LESSON :)