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Petrarch's Attitude Toward Dante

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Merle M. Bevington
Merle M. Bevington*
Affiliation:
Harpur College, Endicott, N. Y.
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Extract

It is generally known that despite Petrarch's widespread reputation in his own day as a man of letters and scholar, his opinion of Dante as a poet was at variance with the literary fortune enjoyed by Dante in subsequent centuries. Many attempts have been made, especially around the turn of the century, to explain why Petrarch failed to perceive Dante's true genius as it appears in the Divine Comedy. For the most part, these explanations fall into one of three categories. Some ascribe Petrarch's attitude toward Dante to his aversion for the vernacular; others to envy; while still others to an inattentive reading or misunderstanding of the Divine Comedy.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 70 , Issue 3 , June 1955 , pp. 488 - 517
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1955

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References

1 Discussions may be found in: V. M. Borghini, “Comparazione fra Dante e Petrarca,” in O. Gigli, Studi sulla Divina Commedia (Florence, 1855), pp. 306–314; U. Bosco, Petrarca, UTET (1946), pp. 259–262; C. Calcaterra, Nella Selva del Petrarca (Bologna, 1952), pp. 185–196; G. Carducci, “Dante, Petrarca e il Boccaccio,” in Prose di G. Carducci (Bologna, 1905), pp. 199–252; G. Cesareo, “Dante e il Petrarca,” Giornale Dantesco, I, 11–12 (1894), 473–508; C. Cipolla, “Quale opinione Petrarca avesse sul valore letterario di Dante,” Archivio Veneto, vii (1874), 407–425; U. Foscolo, “A Parallel Between Dante and Petrarch” in his Essays on Petrarch (London, 1823), pp. 163–208; G. Fracassetti, “Dante e il Petrarca” in Dante e il suo secolo (Florence, 1865), pp. 623–638; G. Melodia, Difesa di Francesco Petrarca (Florence, 1902); F. Neri, “II Petrarca e le rime dantesche della pietra,” La Cullura, viii (1929), 389–404; F. Persico, “Petrarca e Dante,” La Tavola Rotonda, iii, 12,13 (Naples, 1893); N. Scarano, “L'invidia del Petrarca,” Giornale storico della letteratura italiana, xxix (1897), 85.

2 For the text of the poem see G. Boccaccio, Opère latine minori, ed. A. F. Massera (Bari, 1928), pp. 96–97.

3 Le Familiari, Vols. 1–3, ed. V. Rossi, and Vol. 4, ed. Rossi and U. Bosco (Edizione Nazionale, Vols, x-xiii [Florence, 1933–42]).

4 For this letter I have made extensive use of the translation by J. H. Robinson and H. W. Rolfe, Petrarch: The First Modern Scholar and Man of Letters (New York, 1898), pp. 178–190.

5 Tr. G. Fracassetti. Lettere senili di Francesco Petrarca (Florence, 1869).

6 Cf. Sen. xv.11, in which Petrarch recognizes the possibility of treating an “ugly subject” in a “praiseworthy style.”

7 De doctrina cristiana, 3,16. For many of the ideas and quotations used in this section I am indebted to the book by D. W. Robertson, Jr., and B. Huppé, Piers Plowman and Scriptural Tradition (Princeton Univ. Press, 1951), pp. 1–16; and to a forthcoming book on Caedmon by Huppé.

8 De doctrina, 3, 11.

9 Patrologia Lalina, 210.451.

10 Expositio ad Timotheum, iv. 2.

11 Didascalicon, ed. C. H. Buttimer (Washington, D. C, 1939), p. 125.

12 De doctrina, 2, 7–8.

13 St. Augustin et la fin de la culture antique (Paris, 1938), p. 490.

14 K. McKenzie, “Virgil and Dante,” in The Tradition of Virgil (Princeton, 1930).

15 P. de Nolhac, Pétrarque et l'humanisme (Paris, 1907), ii, 138.

16 “Petrarch's Coronation Oration,” translated by E. H. Wilkins, PMLA, lxviii (1953), 1242.

17 De Nolhac, p. 146.

18 Rime, Trionfi e poésie latine (Ricciardi: Naples, 1951), “Trionfo della fama,” iii, 21.

19 De vita solitaria, i, 5, 2.

20 Fam. i.2, xxii.10.

21 De Nolhac, p. 128.

22 Secretum, ii.

23 Rerum memorandarum libri, ed. G. Billanovich (Florence, 1953), iii, 16.

24 L'Esteiica di Dante, Petrarca e Boccaccio (Acireale, 1928), p. 152. Cf. also Fam. i.ll.

25 De Nolhac, p. 138. Cf. also the following quotation from Secretum, iii (Opera, 1554, p. 402), where Petrarch says of Virgil: “… ad naturae tamen ordinem respexit ille dum fingeret.”

26 Ep. Met. ii. 3, 4.

27 Alice Sperduti, “Petrarch on Poetry,” diss., typewritten (Cornell Univ., 1947), pp. 74, 72.

28 J. H. Whitfield, Dante and Virgil (Oxford, 1949), p. 101.

29 Fam. v.S; x.4; xii.7; xiii.6; xvii l; xix.8.

30 Whitfield, p. 102.

31 See E. Williamson, “A Consideration of ‘Vergine Bella’,” Italica, xxix (1952), 215–228.

32 Fam. x 4. An abridged version of this section was read at the 1953 MLA meeting in Chicago.

33 As de Nolhac points out (pp. 130, 147), Petrarch's concept of true poetic allegory is realized primarily in his Eclogues.

34 Rime, Trionfi e poésie latine, p. 808.

36 Cf. Fam. XXH.10, in which Petrarch recants somewhat the position he had taken in the Eclogue.

36 Rime, Trionfi e poésie latine, iv, 160–165.

37 Letter to Cangrande, Le opère di Dante, testo critico deltà Socield Dantesca Italiana (Florence, 1921), pp. 438 f.

38 “Triumph of Eternity,” pp. 126–134.

39 G. Melodia, pp. 125–126.

40 “Triumph of Death,” ii, 35.

41 Ibid., I, 38.

42 'Triumph of Eternity,“ 20–21.

43 Cf. U. Bosco, p. 101.

44 A. Castelli, Il dissidio interiore del Petrarca (Rome, 1937), p. 15.

45 “Triumph of Love,” iv, 165.

46 A. Castelli, p. 27.

47 See C. S. Singleton, An Essay on the Vita Nuova (Cambridge, 1949).

48 R. P. Blackmur, “Dante's Ten Terms for the Treatment of the Treatise,” Kenyon Review, xiv (Spring 1952), 291. Cf. also the revealing study by U. Leo, “The Unfinished Convivio and Dante's Rereading of the Aeneid,” in Med. Stud., xiii (1951), 41–64.

49 C. S. Singleton, “Dante's Allegory,” Speculum, xxv (Jan. 1950), 82.

50 Cf. De vita solitaria, ii, 8; Return memorandarum libri, ii, 31; iii, 93; De sui ipsius ignorantia, passim.

51 Eniditio Didascalica, i.

52 Singleton, “Dante's Allegory,” p. 83.

53 C. S. Singleton, “The Other Journey,” Kenyon Review, xiv (Spring 1952), 204.

54 C. S. Singleton, “Dante and Myth,” JIII, x (Oct. 1940), 492, 500–501.

55 Rime, Trionfi e poésie latine, p. 574,1. 57.

56 “Triumph of Fame,” ii, 55–56.

57 De sui ipsius et mullorum ignorantia, trans. Hans Nachod, in Cassirer, Kristeller, and Randall, The Renaissance Philosophy of Man (Chicago, 1948), p. 117.

58 Invective contra medicum, ed. P. Ricci (Rome, 1950), pp. 66, 72.

59 Cf. J. Whitfield, Petrarch and the Renaissance, Ch. v. Also U. Bosco in Il Rinascimento, significati e limiti (Florence, 1953), p. 62.

60 E. Realfonzo dell'Aéra, “Uno dei primi messaggi dell'Umanesimo: Le ‘Invectivae contra Medicum quendam’,” Itattca, xxix (1952), 96.

61 A. Castelli, p. 56.

62 R. Realfonzo dell'Aera, p. 98.

63 Studisul Rinascimento (Vallecchi, 1923), p. 73.

64 “Poesia e filosofia nel medioevo latine,” Paragone, No. 32 (Aug. 1952), pp. 6,12.

65 Africa, ix, 92–105. These ideas are implied not only in many of the references already given but also in such letters as Fam. ii.9, xxii.10 and Sen. 1.5, xv.11.

66 Ep. Mel. il. 11.