Petrarch is a poet and reformer of European poetry, born in the 14th century. He lived in Florence, Pisa, Avignon, Bologna. In Avignon, he saw Laura in the church and loved Platonic for the rest of his life. Laura married the count, gave birth to many children and died before Petrarch. He wrote love songs and an allegorical poem in Latin and Italian. He was proclaimed the greatest poet and received a laurel wreath.
Petrarchism is a school of poetry founded by Petrarch's followers. Most developed in the 15th and 16th centuries. It represented an imitation of style, motifs and themes.
"Canconier" is a collection of 366 poems, divided into two parts, and consists of: sonnets, ballads, canzones and madrigals. It was written for several decades, and the inspiration was the poet's love for Laura. It is written in the vernacular.
Madrigal is an Italian lyrical form of folk, rural origin. The topic he deals with is love or pastoral content. It is recommended that the madrigal be short and that the combination of verses be simple and harmonious.
The sonnet inherent in Petrarch has 2 quatrains, that is, stanzas of four verses each, and two thirds, that is, stanzas of three verses each. Rome is embraced in the quatrains, and crossed in the thirds.
The "Canconier" collection is divided into two parts. The first part describes the period from the first meeting to the period just before Laura died, and the second part describes the feelings of the great poet after the death of his beloved wife. Otherwise, each song is a whole for itself and is very understandable, regardless of the time of its creation. The analysis of the work is very important, because everyone who reads the work "Canconier" experiences it in a different way. Some see in it a set of Petrarch's feelings, which is divided into parts, while others see his attempt to write a kind of history of one love.
In essence, "Canconier" describes the feelings and thoughts of a man, which are caused by love for a woman. But I note that it is only a matter of platonic love, which has failed to materialize and which remains unattainable for the great poet. The work “Canconier” is colored by a variety of feelings, from happiness and elation to sadness and grief for a prematurely lost, beloved woman. Laura is portrayed at almost every moment as an ideal woman: good, beautiful, smart, spirited, adorned with all the most beautiful both physical and mental qualities. This is, perhaps, the reason why even Petrarch's contemporaries thought that he invented it. But, in the first place, her physical beauty is still sung.
Although he basically says everything nice about her, at certain moments Francesco Petrarca sees Laura as the reason for his downfall, and often portrays her as a combination of opposites: good and bad. She is perfect in his eyes, but she knows how to be both proud and humble. Certainly, the analysis of the work "Canconier" clearly shows that Francesco Petrarca has strong feelings for this woman, but he is also aware that he cannot realize them.
What is especially interesting, when it comes to the analysis and interpretation of the work "Canconier", is that Petrarch in the second part no longer talks so much about Laura, but replaces thoughts about her at certain moments with thoughts about the existence of God. The reading of "Canconier" ends with a prayer that Francesco Petrarca addresses to the Mother of God, with the desire to give him eternal peace. Leaving behind this work, Francesco Petrarca left a kind of monument to a woman, his beloved and beloved Laura. The collection is a symbol of unattainable love, unattainable beauty.
Attached are two poems; before and after Laura's death
TO MAKE HONORABLE TO ME
(To make a legion of a vendetta)
To take revenge on me honorably
and in one day a series of insults washed away,
Cupid took the bow of dreams undercover, as
man, which the victim noticed.
Virtue was so close to her heart
to protect him better with his eye,
when the death blow goes down there,
where the tip of the arrow bounced off easily.
Al excited about the attack first,
he had neither time nor strength,
to fight with weapons in that misery,
or to pull me - ingenious, daring -
out of that misery on the hill of thought dear,
as she would want in vain now.
THE MOST BEAUTIFUL FACE THAT CONSCIOUSNESS KNEW
(Discolorai hai, Morte, il píu bel volto)
The most beautiful face consciousness knew,
you fade, Death; beautiful eyes go out,
and the embroidery of the body - which a hundred beauties adorn it -
with a single soul, you are torn.
With one movement, everything suffers slightly,
the most beautiful words anyone has ever heard,
force silence; I stayed in tears,
so all around me pain with boredom reigns.
Pitying me for so much sorrow,
sometimes my lady comforts me,
apart from that consolation of living I have no other.
As she speaks her face the glow plays her
from which the heart would burn with ease
in a man like a bear and a tiger.