Approaches to Teaching Petrarch’s ‘Canzoniere’ and the Petrarchan Tradition ed. by Christopher Kleinhenz and Andrea Dini (review)

This guide to teaching Petrarch’s Canzoniere (also known as the Rerum vulgarium fragmenta) is divided into two parts. In the first, the editors, Christopher Kleinhenz and Andrea Dini, provide an overview of essential bibliographical materials for teaching the Canzoniere, which includes editions, translations, selected secondary literature, and electronic/audio-visual resources. Relatively new online resources such as the Oregon Petrarch Open Book (2011) led by Massimo Lollini are also noted. As the editors make clear, their lists of teaching materials derive from a survey of predominantly undergraduate instructors teaching medieval Italian and Petrarchism in North American institutes of higher learning. For reading courses on Petrarch, respondents indicated a strong preference for philological and translation issues, rather than secondary literature. Where secondary literature is consulted in more advanced undergraduate courses, instructors apparently rely mainly on the oft-cited, classic essays by Albert Russell Ascoli, Robert Durling, John Freccero, Giuseppe Mazzotta, and Nancy Vickers.

The second and considerably longer section consists of twenty-six essays by expert scholars addressing a series of questions and techniques for teaching the Canzoniere. Topics range from Kleinhenz’s delightfully succinct exposition on the rudiments of versification and rhyme, to teaching Petrarch’s influences, legacy, and the Canzoniere in comparative literature courses, and extend to Marc Vanscheenwijck’s examination of the setting to music of Petrarch’s verse by sixteenth-century madrigalists. Vanscheenwijck unfortunately overlooks the small number of musical settings prior to the Petrarchan revival of the late fifteenth century: Jacopo da Bologna’s setting of Non al suo amante and Guillaume Du Fay’s delightful rendition of Vergine bella could be added to student playlists.

As its editors intend, this book will be of general interest to those charged with teaching the Canzoniere and Petrarchism to undergraduates. Some essays will also be of broader utility to scholars looking for succinct and basic introductions to aspects of Petrarchan scholarship, including Petrarch’s place among the tre corone, his influence, the women in his poetry, his poetics, and his poetic relation with the ancients. A lengthy bibliography is assembled at the end of the book from the preceding contributions.