• Placing Petrarch’s Legacy: The Politics of Petrarch’s Tomb and Boccaccio’s Last Letter

    Author(s):
    David Geoffrey Lummus (see profile)
    Date:
    2017
    Subject(s):
    Italian literature, Renaissance, Middle Ages, Latin language, Italy--Florence, Boccaccio, Giovanni, 1313-1375
    Item Type:
    Article
    Tag(s):
    Petrarch, Medieval, Latin, Florence, Boccaccio
    Permanent URL:
    http://dx.doi.org/10.17613/p9y6-r449
    Abstract:
    In readings of orations, letters, and poems about Petrarch’s death composed in Paduan and Florentine intellectual circles, this article shows that the well-known praise of Petrarch in these texts is a function of a political competition over Petrarch’s remains and, with them, over the rightful location of his legacy. Boccaccio’s last letter, which stands out for its rhetorical sophistication and cultural sensitivity, intervenes in this largely provincial debate with farsighted theoretical coherence and cosmopolitan political ambition. Animated by a familiar vernacular poetics, Boccaccio theorizes an intellectual entombment of Petrarch in Florence that is consonant with Boccaccio’s ongoing cultural project.
    Notes:
    Renaissance Quarterly 71.2 (2017): 435-73.
    Metadata:
    xml
    Published as:
    Journal article     Show details
    Pub. DOI:
    doi.org/10.1086/693178
    Publisher:
    University of Chicago Press
    Pub. Date:
    2017-6-6
    Journal:
    Renaissance Quarterly
    Volume:
    70
    Issue:
    2
    Page Range:
    435 - 473
    ISSN:
    0034-4338,1935-0236
    Status:
    Published
    Last Updated:
    5 years ago
    License:
    All Rights Reserved

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