Petrarch
Francis Petrarch | |
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Early Renaissance | |
Genres |
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Subjects |
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Literary movement | |
Notable works | |
Notable awards | Poet laureate of Rome, 1341 |
Children | Giovanni (1337–1361) Francesca (born in 1343) |
Parents | Ser Petracco (father) Eletta Canigiani (mother) |
Relatives | Gherardo Petracco (brother) Giovanni Boccaccio (friend) |
Francis Petrarch (
Petrarch's rediscovery of Cicero's letters is often credited with initiating the 14th-century Italian Renaissance and the founding of Renaissance humanism.[2] In the 16th century, Pietro Bembo created the model for the modern Italian language based on Petrarch's works, as well as those of Giovanni Boccaccio, and, to a lesser extent, Dante Alighieri.[3] Petrarch was later endorsed as a model for Italian style by the Accademia della Crusca.
Petrarch's sonnets were admired and imitated throughout Europe during the Renaissance and became a model for
Biography
Youth and early career
Petrarch was born in the
Petrarch spent his early childhood in the village of Incisa, near Florence. He spent much of his early life at Avignon and nearby Carpentras, where his family moved to follow Pope Clement V, who moved there in 1309 to begin the Avignon Papacy. Petrarch studied law at the University of Montpellier (1316–20) and Bologna (1320–23) with a lifelong friend and schoolmate, Guido Sette, future archbishop of Genoa. Because his father was in the legal profession (a notary), he insisted that Petrarch and his brother also study law. Petrarch, however, was primarily interested in writing and Latin literature and considered these seven years wasted. Petrarch often got too distracted by his non-legal interests, that his father once threw his books into a fire, which he later lamented. [6] Additionally, he proclaimed that through legal manipulation his guardians robbed him of his small property inheritance in Florence, which only reinforced his dislike for the legal system. He protested, "I couldn't face making a merchandise of my mind", since he viewed the legal system as the art of selling justice.[5]
Petrarch was a prolific letter writer and counted
He traveled widely in Europe, served as an ambassador, and, because he traveled for pleasure,
Disdaining what he believed to be the ignorance of the era in which he lived, Petrarch is credited with creating the concept of a historical "Dark Ages",[4] which most modern scholars now find inaccurate and misleading.[16][17][18]
Mount Ventoux
Petrarch recounts that on 26 April 1336, with his brother and two servants, he climbed to the top of
Scholars[22] note that Petrarch's letter[23][24] to Dionigi displays a strikingly "modern" attitude of aesthetic gratification in the grandeur of the scenery and is still often cited in books and journals devoted to the sport of mountaineering. In Petrarch, this attitude is coupled with an aspiration for a virtuous Christian life, and on reaching the summit, he took from his pocket a volume by his beloved mentor, Saint Augustine, that he always carried with him.[25]
For pleasure alone he climbed Mont Ventoux, which rises to more than six thousand feet, beyond Vaucluse. It was no great feat, of course; but he was the first recorded
Marseilles. He took Augustine's Confessions from his pocket and reflected that his climb was merely an allegory of aspiration toward a better life.[26]
As the book fell open, Petrarch's eyes were immediately drawn to the following words:
And men go about to wonder at the heights of the mountains, and the mighty waves of the sea, and the wide sweep of rivers, and the circuit of the ocean, and the revolution of the stars, but themselves they consider not.[23]
Petrarch's response was to turn from the outer world of nature to the inner world of "soul":
I closed the book, angry with myself that I should still be admiring earthly things who might long ago have learned from even the pagan philosophers that nothing is wonderful but the soul, which, when great itself, finds nothing great outside itself. Then, in truth, I was satisfied that I had seen enough of the mountain; I turned my inward eye upon myself, and from that time not a syllable fell from my lips until we reached the bottom again. ... [W]e look about us for what is to be found only within. ... How many times, think you, did I turn back that day, to glance at the summit of the mountain which seemed scarcely a cubit high compared with the range of human contemplation[23]
James Hillman argues that this rediscovery of the inner world is the real significance of the Ventoux event.[27] The Renaissance begins not with the ascent of Mont Ventoux but with the subsequent descent—the "return [...] to the valley of soul", as Hillman puts it.
Arguing against such a singular and hyperbolic periodization, Paul James suggests a different reading:
In the alternative argument that I want to make, these emotional responses, marked by the changing senses of space and time in Petrarch's writing, suggest a person caught in unsettled tension between two different but contemporaneous ontological formations: the traditional and the modern.[28]
Later years
Petrarch spent the later part of his life journeying through northern Italy and southern France as an international scholar and poet-diplomat. His career in
For a number of years in the 1340s and 1350s he lived in a small house at Fontaine-de-Vaucluse east of Avignon in France.
Giovanni died of the
About 1368 Petrarch and Francesca (with her family) moved to the small town of
Original Latin | English translation |
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Etruscus gemino vates ardebat amore: |
The Tuscan bard of deathless fame |
Petrarch's will (dated 4 April 1370) leaves 50
Works
Petrarch is best known for his Italian poetry, notably the
Petrarch also published many volumes of his letters, including a few written to long-dead figures from history such as Cicero and Virgil. Cicero, Virgil, and Seneca were his literary models. Most of his Latin writings are difficult to find today, but several of his works are available in English translations. Several of his Latin works are scheduled to appear in the Harvard University Press series I Tatti.[36] It is difficult to assign any precise dates to his writings because he tended to revise them throughout his life.
Petrarch collected his letters into two major sets of books called
While Petrarch's poetry was set to music frequently after his death, especially by Italian
Laura and poetry
This section needs additional citations for verification. (April 2017) |
On 6 April 1327,[41] after Petrarch gave up his vocation as a priest, the sight of a woman called "Laura" in the church of Sainte-Claire d'Avignon awoke in him a lasting passion, celebrated in the Rerum vulgarium fragmenta ("Fragments of Vernacular Matters"). Laura may have been Laura de Noves, the wife of Count Hugues de Sade (an ancestor of the Marquis de Sade). There is little definite information in Petrarch's work concerning Laura, except that she is lovely to look at, fair-haired, with a modest, dignified bearing. Laura and Petrarch had little or no personal contact. According to his "Secretum", she refused him because she was already married. He channeled his feelings into love poems that were exclamatory rather than persuasive, and wrote prose that showed his contempt for men who pursue women. Upon her death in 1348, the poet found that his grief was as difficult to live with as was his former despair. Later, in his "Letter to Posterity", Petrarch wrote: "In my younger days I struggled constantly with an overwhelming but pure love affair—my only one, and I would have struggled with it longer had not premature death, bitter but salutary for me, extinguished the cooling flames. I certainly wish I could say that I have always been entirely free from desires of the flesh, but I would be lying if I did".
While it is possible she was an idealized or pseudonymous character—particularly since the name "Laura" has a linguistic connection to the poetic "laurels" Petrarch coveted—Petrarch himself always denied it. His frequent use of l'aura is also remarkable: for example, the line "Erano i capei d'oro a l'aura sparsi" may mean both "her hair was all over Laura's body" and "the wind (l'aura) blew through her hair". There is psychological realism in the description of Laura, although Petrarch draws heavily on conventionalised descriptions of love and lovers from troubadour songs and other literature of courtly love. Her presence causes him unspeakable joy, but his unrequited love creates unendurable desires, inner conflicts between the ardent lover and the mystic Christian, making it impossible to reconcile the two. Petrarch's quest for love leads to hopelessness and irreconcilable anguish, as he expresses in the series of paradoxes in Rima 134 "Pace non trovo, et non ò da far guerra;/e temo, et spero; et ardo, et son un ghiaccio": "I find no peace, and yet I make no war:/and fear, and hope: and burn, and I am ice".[42]
Laura is unreachable and evanescent – descriptions of her are evocative yet fragmentary. Francesco de Sanctis praises the powerful music of his verse in his Storia della letteratura italiana. Gianfranco Contini, in a famous essay ("Preliminari sulla lingua del Petrarca". Petrarca, Canzoniere. Turin, Einaudi, 1964), has described Petrarch's language in terms of "unilinguismo" (contrasted with Dantean "plurilinguismo").
Sonnet 227
Original Italian[43] | English translation by A.S. Kline[44] |
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Aura che quelle chiome bionde et crespe |
Breeze, blowing that blonde curling hair, |
Dante
Petrarch is very different from
In contrast, Petrarch's thought and style are relatively uniform throughout his life—he spent much of it revising the songs and sonnets of the Canzoniere rather than moving to new subjects or poetry. Here, poetry alone provides a consolation for personal grief, much less philosophy or politics (as in Dante), for Petrarch fights within himself (sensuality versus mysticism, profane versus Christian literature), not against anything outside of himself. The strong moral and political convictions which had inspired Dante belong to the Middle Ages and the libertarian spirit of the commune; Petrarch's moral dilemmas, his refusal to take a stand in politics, his reclusive life point to a different direction, or time. The free commune, the place that had made Dante an eminent politician and scholar, was being dismantled: the signoria was taking its place. Humanism and its spirit of empirical inquiry, however, were making progress—but the papacy (especially after Avignon) and the empire (Henry VII, the last hope of the white Guelphs, died near Siena in 1313) had lost much of their original prestige.[46]
Petrarch polished and perfected the sonnet form inherited from
Philosophy
A highly introspective man, Petrarch helped shape the nascent humanist movement as many of the internal conflicts and musings expressed in his writings were embraced by Renaissance humanist philosophers and argued continually for the next 200 years. For example, he struggled with the proper relation between the active and contemplative life, and tended to emphasize the importance of solitude and study. In a clear disagreement with Dante, in 1346 Petrarch argued in
Petrarchism
Petrarchism was a 16th-century
Legacy
Petrarch's influence is evident in the works of
The
While in Avignon in 1991,
In November 2003, it was announced that pathological anatomists would be exhuming Petrarch's body from his casket in Arquà Petrarca, to verify 19th-century reports that he had stood 1.83 meters (about six feet), which would have been tall for his period. The team from the University of Padua also hoped to reconstruct his cranium to generate a computerized image of his features to coincide with his 700th birthday. The tomb had been opened previously in 1873 by Professor Giovanni Canestrini, also of Padua University. When the tomb was opened, the skull was discovered in fragments and a DNA test revealed that the skull was not Petrarch's,[64] prompting calls for the return of Petrarch's skull.
The researchers are fairly certain that the body in the tomb is Petrarch's due to the fact that the skeleton bears evidence of injuries mentioned by Petrarch in his writings, including a kick from a donkey when he was 42.[65]
Numismatics
He is credited with being the first and most famous aficionado of Numismatics. He described visiting Rome and asking peasants to bring him ancient coins they would find in the soil which he would buy from them, and writes of his delight at being able to identify the names and features of Roman emperors.
Works in English translation
- Africa, vol. 1–4, translated by Erik Z. D. Ellis (thesis; Baylor University, 2007).
- Bucolicum Carmen, translated by ISBN 9780300017243
- The Canzoniere; or, Rerum vulgarium fragmenta, translated by ISBN 9780253213174
- Invectives, translated by David Marsh (Harvard University Press, 2008). ISBN 9780674030886
- Itinerarium: A Proposed Route for a Pilgrimage from Genoa to the Holy Land, translated by H. James Shey (Binghamton, New York: Global Academic Publishers, 2004). ISBN 9781586840228
- Letters on Familiar Matters (Rerum familiarium libri), vol. 1 (bkk. 1–8), vol. 2 (bkk. 9–16), vol. 3 (bkk. 17–24), translated by Aldo S. Bernardo (New York: Italica Press, 2005). ISBN 9781599100005
- Letters of Old Age (Rerum senilium libri), vol. 1 (bkk. 1–9), vol. 2 (bkk. 10–18), translated by Aldo S. Bernardo, Saul Levin, & Reta A. Bernardo (New York: Italica Press, 2005). ISBN 9781599100043
- The Life of Solitude, translated by ISBN 9781481318099
- My Secret Book (Secretum), translated by ISBN 9780674003460
- On Religious Leisure (De otio religioso), translated by Susan S. Schearer (New York: Italica Press, 2002). ISBN 9780934977111
- Penitential Psalms and Prayers, translated by Demetrio S. Yocum (University of Notre Dame Press, 2024). ISBN 9780268207847
- Remedies for Fortune Fair and Foul, translated by Conrad H. Rawski (Indiana University Press, 1991). ISBN 9780253348449
- The Revolution of Cola di Rienzo, translated by Mario E. Cosenza; 3rd revised edition by Ronald G. Musto (New York: Italica Press, 1996). ISBN 9780934977005
- Selected Letters, vol. 1 & 2, translated by ISBN 978-0674971622
See also
Notes
- ^ Rico, Francisco; Marcozzi, Luca (2015). "Petrarca, Francesco". Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani (in Italian). Vol. 82. Istituto dell'Enciclopedia Italiana.
- ^ This designation appears, for instance, in a recent review of Carol Quillen's Rereading the Renaissance.
- ^ In the Prose della volgar lingua, Bembo proposes Petrarch and Boccaccio as models of Italian style, while expressing reservations about emulating Dante's usage.
- ^ Theodore E. Mommsen, "Petrarch's Conception of the 'Dark Ages'" Speculum 17.2 (April 1942: 226–242); JSTORlink to a collection of several letters in the same issue.
- ^ ISBN 0-618-12738-0
- ISBN 978-0-253-34122-8.
- ^ after Albertino Mussato who was the first to be so crowned according to Robert Weiss, The Renaissance Discovery of Classical Antiquity (Oxford, 1973)
- ^ Plumb, p. 164
- ^ Pietrangeli (1981), p. 32
- ISBN 978-0226437439.
- ISBN 0-8046-1730-9
- ^ NSA Family Encyclopedia, Petrarch, Francesco, Vol. 11, p. 240, Standard Education Corp. 1992
- ^ Vittore Branca, Boccaccio; The Man and His Works, tr. Richard Monges, pp. 113–118
- ^ "Ep. Fam. 18.2 §9". Archived from the original on 2016-02-20. Retrieved 2018-11-12.
- ^ "History – Biblioteca Capitolare Verona". Bibliotecacapitolare.it. Archived from the original on 20 April 2018. Retrieved 23 February 2022.
- ISBN 0-271-01780-5.. In explaining his approach to writing the work, Snyder refers to the "so-called Dark Ages", noting that "Historians and archaeologists have never liked the label Dark Ages ... there are numerous indicators that these centuries were neither 'dark' nor 'barbarous' in comparison with other eras."
- , pp. 383–389.
- ^ Raico, Ralph (30 November 2006). "The European Miracle". Retrieved 14 August 2011. "The stereotype of the Middle Ages as 'the Dark Ages' fostered by Renaissance humanists and Enlightenment philosophes has, of course, long since been abandoned by scholars."
- ISBN 0-295-97577-6
- Swan Sonnenschein(1904), pp. 301–302.
- ^ Lynn Thorndike, Renaissance or Prenaissance, Journal of the History of Ideas, Vol. 4, No. 1. (Jan. 1943), pp. 69–74. JSTOR link to a collection of several letters in the same issue.
- J.H. Plumb, in his book The Italian Renaissance,
- ^ a b c Familiares 4.1 translated by Morris Bishop, quoted in Plumb.
- S2CID 163476193.
- ^ McLaughlin, Edward Tompkins; Studies in Medieval Life and Literature, p. 6, New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1894
- ^ Plumb, J.H. (1961). The Horizon Book of the Renaissance. New York: American Heritage. p. 26.
- ISBN 978-0-06-090563-7.
- S2CID 191454887. Retrieved 4 August 2015.
- ^ Plumb, p. 165
- ^ "(Not?) Petrarch's Cat". blogs.bl.uk. Retrieved 2022-04-02.
- ^ "The Last Lay of Petrarch's Cat". Notes and Queries. 5 (121). Translated by J. O. B.: 174 21 February 1852. Retrieved 5 June 2022. Latin text included.
- ^ Bishop, pp. 360, 366. Francesca and the quotes from there;[clarification needed] Bishop adds that the dressing-gown was a piece of tact: "fifty florins would have bought twenty dressing-gowns".
- ^ Tedder, Henry Richard; Brown, James Duff (1911). Chisholm, Hugh (ed.). Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 16 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 573. . In
- ^ Francesco Petrarch, On Religious Leisure (De otio religioso), edited & translated by Susan S. Schearer, introduction by Ronald G. Witt (New York: Italica Press, 2002).
- ISBN 978-0271040745.
- ^ "I Tatti Renaissance Library/Forthcoming and Published Volumes". Hup.harvard.edu. Retrieved July 31, 2009.
- ^ Letters on Familiar Matters (Rerum familiarium libri), translated by Aldo S. Bernardo, 3 vols.' and Letters of Old Age (Rerum senilium libri), translated by Aldo S. Bernardo, Saul Levin & Reta A. Bernardo, 2 vols.
- ^ Petrarch's Letter to Posterity (1909 English translation, with notes, by James Harvey Robinson)
- S2CID 164097201.
- ^ Plumb, p. 173
- ^ 6 April 1327 is often thought to be Good Friday based on poems 3 and 211 of Petrarch's Rerum vulgarium fragmenta, but that date fell on Monday in 1327. The apparent explanation is that Petrarch was not referring to the variable date of Good Friday but to the date fixed by the death of Christ in absolute time, which at the time was thought to be April 6 (Mark Musa, Petrarch's Canzoniere, Indiana University Press, 1996, p. 522).
- ^ "Petrarch (1304–1374). The Complete Canzoniere: 123–183". Poetryintranslation.com.
- ^ "Canzoniere (Rerum vulgarium fragmenta)/Aura che quelle chiome bionde et crespe". It.wikisource.org.
- ^ "Petrarch (1304–1374) – the Complete Canzoniere: 184–244". Poetryintranslation.com.
- ^ "Archived copy" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on November 12, 2013. Retrieved December 28, 2013.
{{cite web}}
: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link) - ^ "The Oregon Petrarch Open Book – "Petrarch is again in sight"". petrarch.uoregon.edu.
- ^ "Movements : Poetry through the Ages". Webexhibits.org.
- ^ See for example Rudolf Pfeiffer, History of Classical Scholarship 1300–1850, Oxford University Press, 1976, p. 1; Gilbert Highet, The Classical Tradition, Oxford University Press, 1949, p. 81–88.
- ISBN 0-8242-0958-3, p. 303, item 4567.
- ISBN 9780873282192.
- ISBN 9780801881268.
- ISBN 9781781888827.
- ISBN 9781526144416.
- ISBN 9781317001065.
- ^ Petrarca, Francesco (1879). De vita Solitaria (in Italian). Bologna: Gaetano Romagnoli.
- ^ "Edizioni Ghibli, Il Rinascimento e Petrarca" (in Italian). edizionighibli.com. August 18, 2016. Retrieved September 6, 2019.
- ISBN 0-719-00745-3.
- ^ Dasenbrock, Reed Way (January 1985). "The Petrarchan Context of Spenser's Amoretti". PMLA. 100 (1).
- ISBN 978-0-691-15491-6.
- ISBN 978-0-684-80509-2
- ^ Spencer, Patricia (2008) "Regarding Scrivo in Vento: A Conversation with Elliott Carter" Archived 2016-03-04 at the Wayback Machine Flutest Quarterly summer.
- ^ "Dolce Tormento | Kaija Saariaho". www.wisemusicclassical.com. Retrieved 2023-12-18.
- ^ "Kaija Saariaho's Let the Wind Speak". Music & Literature. 2016-03-31. Retrieved 2023-12-18.
- PMID 17320326.
- ^ "UPF.edu" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on March 6, 2009. Retrieved March 1, 2009.
References
- Bartlett, Kenneth R. (1992). The Civilization of the Italian Renaissance; a Source Book. Lexington: D.C. Heath and Company. ISBN 0-669-20900-7
- ISBN 0-06-131162-6.
- Hanawalt, A. Barbara (1998). The Middle Ages: An Illustrated History pp. 131–132 New York: Oxford University Press [ISBN missing]
- S2CID 191454887.
- Kallendorf, Craig. "The Historical Petrarch," The American Historical Review, Vol. 101, No. 1 (Feb. 1996): 130–141.
- Minta, Stephen (1980). Petrarch and Petrarchism: the English and French Traditions. Manchester; New York: Manchester University Press; Barnes & Noble. ISBN 0-719-00745-3.
Further reading
- Bernardo, Aldo (1983). "Petrarch." In Dictionary of the Middle Ages, volume 9
- Celenza, Christopher S. (2017). Petrarch: Everywhere a Wanderer. London: Reaktion. ISBN 978-1780238388
- Hennigfeld, Ursula (2008). Der ruinierte Körper. Petrarkistische Sonette in transkultureller Perspektive. Würzburg, Königshausen & Neumann, 2008, ISBN 978-3-8260-3768-9
- Hollway-Calthrop, Henry (1907). Petrarch: His Life and Times, Methuen. From Google Books
- Kohl, Benjamin G. (1978). "Francesco Petrarch: Introduction; How a Ruler Ought to Govern His State," in The Earthly Republic: Italian Humanists on Government and Society, ed. Benjamin G. Kohl and Ronald G. Witt, 25–78. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. ISBN 0-8122-1097-2
- Nauert, Charles G. (2006). Humanism and the Culture of Renaissance Europe: Second Edition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-54781-4
- Rawski, Conrad H. (1991). Petrarch's Remedies for Fortune Fair and Foul A Modern English Translation of De remediis utriusque Fortune, with a Commentary. ISBN 0-253-34849-8
- Robinson, James Harvey (1898). Petrarch, the First Modern Scholar and Man of Letters Harvard University
- Kirkham, Victoria and Armando Maggi (2009). Petrarch: A Critical Guide to the Complete Works. University of Chicago Press. ISBN 978-0-226-43741-5.
- A. Lee, Petrarch and St. Augustine: Classical Scholarship, Christian Theology and the Origins of the Renaissance in Italy, Brill, Leiden, 2012, ISBN 978-9004224032
- N. Mann, Petrarca [Ediz. orig. Oxford University Press (1984)] – Ediz. ital. a cura di G. Alessio e L. Carlo Rossi – Premessa di G. Velli, LED Edizioni Universitarie, Milano, 1993, ISBN 88-7916-021-4
- Il Canzoniere» di Francesco Petrarca. La Critica Contemporanea, G. Barbarisi e C. Berra (edd.), LED Edizioni Universitarie, Milano, 1992, ISBN 88-7916-005-2
- G. Baldassari, Unum in locum. Strategie macrotestuali nel Petrarca politico, LED Edizioni Universitarie, Milano, 2006, ISBN 88-7916-309-4
- Francesco Petrarca, Rerum vulgarium Fragmenta. Edizione critica di Giuseppe Savoca, Olschki, Firenze, 2008, ISBN 978-88-222-5744-4
- Plumb, J. H., The Italian Renaissance, Houghton Mifflin, 2001, ISBN 0-618-12738-0
- Giuseppe Savoca, Il Canzoniere di Petrarca. Tra codicologia ed ecdotica, Olschki, Firenze, 2008, ISBN 978-88-222-5805-2
- Roberta Antognini, Il progetto autobiografico delle "Familiares" di Petrarca, LED Edizioni Universitarie, Milano, 2008, ISBN 978-88-7916-396-5
- Paul Geyer und Kerstin Thorwarth (hg), Petrarca und die Herausbildung des modernen Subjekts (Göttingen, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2009) (Gründungsmythen Europas in Literatur, Musik und Kunst, 2)
- Massimo Colella, «Cantin le ninfe co' soavi accenti». Per una definizione del petrarchismo di Veronica Gambara, in «Testo», 2022.
External links
- Petrarch and his Cat Muse
- Petrarch from the Catholic Encyclopedia
- Excerpts from his works and letters
- Francesco Petrarca (Petrarch) (1304–1374)
- Works by Petrarch at Project Gutenberg
- Works by or about Francesco Petrarca at Internet Archive
- Works by or about Petrarch at Internet Archive
- Works by Petrarch at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks)
- Timeline of life of Petrarch
- Poems From The Canzoniere, translated by Tony Kline.
- Francesco Petrarch at The Online Library of Liberty
- De remediis utriusque fortunae, Cremonae, B. de Misintis ac Caesaris Parmensis, 1492. (Vicifons)
- Free scores of works by Petrarch in the Choral Public Domain Library (ChoralWiki)
- Petrarch and Laura Multi-lingual site including translated works in the public domain and biography, pictures, music.
- Petrarch – the poet who lost his head April 2004 article in The Guardian regarding the exhumation of Petrarch's remains
- Oregon Petrarch Open Book – A working database-driven hypertext in and around Francis Petrarch's Rerum Vulgarium Fragmenta (Canzoniere)
- Historia Griseldis From the Rare Book and Special Collections Division at the Library of Congress
- Francesco Petrarch, De viris illustribus, digitized French codex, at Somni
- Petrarch's Vision of the Muslim and Byzantine East – Nancy Bisaha, Speculum, University of Chicago Press