Petrarch

Songs and Sonnets

Petrarca Francesco

"Petrarch deserves to be valued as a real man, a careful thinker, a good poet", writes Nicholas Kilmer introducing his enlarged selection of the great Italian poet who lived from 1304 to 1374. Free in form yet holding close to the central impulses of Petrarch's inspiration, Kilmer's "readings" in this bilingual edition present Petrarch as a confessional poet and a humane moralist of startling honesty. The book is divided into two parts: poems written during Laura's lifetime, and poems written after her death. In this last section Kilmer revisits Petrarch's poems many years after translating the poems of Laura's lifetime, thus completing his picture of Petrarch's abiding inspiration.

About the Author

Petrarch (Francesco Petrarca) was born in 1304 in Arezzo, Tuscany, to Florentine parents. His early years were spent in the Avignon area of France, to which he repeatedly returned after many trips around Europe. Although he was a cleric in minor orders, his whole life was spent as a scholar and man of letters. His extensive works in Latin have made him known as the first man of the Renaissance, but the Italian poems of his "Canzoniere" (composed and revised over more than thirty years) are the most influential of his works and of most interest to the modern reader. He died in 1374 and is buried at Arqua, near Padua.

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