Francesco Petrarca The famous expression of Petrarch Il

Francesco Petrarca

The famous expression of Petrarch: « Il saggio muta consiglio, ma lo stolto resta della sua opinione. » TRANSLATION IN ENGLISH: « The wise man changes his mind, but the fool man doesn’t changes his mind. »

Life: Francesco Petrarca was born in Arezzo (20 th July 1304) and he was an Italian poet. He is known in English as Petrarch is often popularly called the "Father of Humanism". Based on Petrarch's works, and to a lesser extent those of Dante Alighieri and Giovanni Boccaccio, in the 16 th century a model for the modern Italian language was created. Petrarch is credited with developing the sonnet. His sonnets were admired and imitated in Europe during the Renaissance and became a model for lyrical poetry. Petrarch was also known for being one of the first people to call the Middle Ages the Dark Ages, although the negative connotation of that word, as we know it today, is largely the legacy of romantic literature. Petrarch died in Arquà (19 th July 1374).

The Canzoniere: The most important written work of Petrarch is “The Canzoniere”. This work is written in a vernacular language. Of its 366 Rime , the vast majority are in sonnet form (317), though the sequence contains a number of canzoni (29), sestine (9), madrigals (4), and ballads (7). Its central theme is the poet's love for Laura, a woman Petrarch allegedly met on April 6 th, 1327, in the Church of Sainte Claire in Avignon. Petrarch's meticulous dating of his manuscripts has allowed scholars to deduce that the poems were written over a period of forty years, with the earliest dating from shortly after 1327, and the latest around 1368. The transcription and ordering of the sequence itself went on until 1374, the year of the poet's death. The two sections of the sequence which are divided by Laura's death have traditionally been labelled 'In vita' (In life') and 'In morte' (In death) respectively, though Petrarch made no such distinction. His work would go on to become what Spiller calls 'the single greatest influence on the love poetry of Renaissance Europe until well into the seventeenth century'.

Voi ch'ascoltate in rime sparse il suono: ORIGINAL TEXT: TRANSLATION IN ENGLISH: Voi ch'ascoltate in rime sparse il suono di quei sospiri ond'io nudriva 'l core in sul mio primo giovenile errore quand'era in parte altr'uom da quel ch'i' sono, You who hear the sound, in scattered rhymes, of those sighs on which I fed my heart, in my first vagrant youthfulness, when I was partly other than I am, del vario stile in ch'io piango et ragiono fra le vane speranze e 'l van dolore, ove sia chi per prova intenda amore, spero trovar pietà, nonché perdono. I hope to find pity, and forgiveness, for all the modes in which I talk and weep, between vain hope and vain sadness, in those who understand love through its trials. Ma ben veggio or sí come al popol tutto favola fui gran tempo, onde sovente di me mesdesmo meco mi vergogno; et del mio vaneggiar vergogna è 'l frutto, e 'l pentersi, e 'l conoscer chiaramente che quanto piace al mondo è breve sogno Yet I see clearly now I have become an old tale amongst all these people, so that it often makes me ashamed of myself; and shame is the fruit of my vanities, and remorse, and the clearest knowledge of how the world's delight is a brief dream.

…The end… Thank you very much for your attention Work of: Marotta Francesco and Stefano Cipro