Petrarch: A Critical Guide to the Complete Works (review)

This guide, prepared from presentations at a 2004 conference held to mark the seven hundredth anniversary of Petrarch's birth, succeeds splendidly in showing "the poet at the hub of a literary panopticon." The guide's frontispiece reproduces the opening page of the manuscript of De vita solitaria, which Petrarch began writing in 1346 during a retreat at Vaucluse. That text draws a sharp contrast between a life in nature that brings "the blessedness of solitude" and a hectic city life that renders people "agitated and careworn and breathless." The joy of being free to devote himself to a contemplative, creative existence in the company of loving friends differs entirely, he tells us, from a state of "pining and anxious seclusion." Armando Maggi points out that De vita solitaria was Petrarch's most transcribed text during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, founding a long tradition, from Montaigne on, of European meditations on solitude.

Together, the chapters of this critical guide aptly convey the scope, depth, and connectedness of Petrarch's writings, against the background of the classical texts that he did so much to bring to light. The authors draw on Petrarch's abundant correspondence, including letters in the form of dialogues with past authors, such as Seneca, Cicero, Virgil, and Homer; on his Latin orations; on his histories and biographies; and on his polemical writings, such as the Invective contra medicum—the latter written and rewritten during years when he experienced the death from the Black Plague of his beloved Laura, his cherished son Giovanni, and close friends. All of Petrarch's works are given close scrutiny in the context of his engagement in perennial debates of current concern. The result is a volume that illuminates the life and work of this "father and hero of European humanism."