The Concealed and the Revealed: Dantean Subtexts and Petrarchan Identity in the Africa

Throughout his life, Petrarch was creatively tormented by the fame of his predecessor Dante, whose Commedia was by far the dominant epic poem of the Italian trecento. This article contends that the literary identity of Petrarch in his only epic poem, the Africa, is significantly contrasted with that of Dante. In Book 1, Dante’s name is explicitly unmentioned while the Commedia is presented as a model that Petrarch claims to bypass. In Book 5, the specific details of the Dantean story of Paolo & Francesca function as one of the key (unmentioned) models that Petrarch correctively rewrites. In Book 9, on the other hand, Petrarch’s name is explicitly mentioned as the happy 14th-century culmination of new classical translatio of epic poetry that is visibly non-Dantean.