Petrarch's Antipodes

An important recent study of humanist geographical culture by Nathalie Bouloux has drawn attention to several references to the antipodes in the works of Petrarch. Extending Bouloux's analysis, I discuss the sources and influences that informed Petrarch's antipodal allusions, and their nature and context in Petrarch's letters, in Africa, and in the Secretum. Petrarch did not simply Christianize pagan material; instead, he maintained the antipodes as a 'third term': a means of negotiating oppositions between pagan and Christian inheritance, between the pursuit and renunciation of glory, and between the human and the divine.