Petrarch

Petrarch (1304–74)

humanism

Petrarch, aka Francesco Petrarca (1304–74), is low-key famous for all sorts of things: popularizing the sonnet... being the first person to climb a mountain "just because it was there" and write about it... being obsessed with the same woman (Laura) for his entire life despite little to no evidence that he actually knew her in real life... and dedicating much of his life to re-discovering classical literature and culture (a phenomenon now called humanism, which is often understood as the basis of the Italian Renaissance).

Cola di Rienzo (1313–54)

One of the quirks that makes Petrarch (and his contemporary Cola di Rienzo, 131–)54 so engaging—and also, deeply weird—are the personal ways in which they engaged with Italy's classical past: Cola tried to recall the Romans to their ancient glory and re-establish the Roman Republic in the mid-14th century (bc why not), while Petrarch wrote intimate letters to famous Romans like Cicero who had been dead for 1400 years—fanfiction, as one scholar has brilliantly labeled it. For this assignment students chose one of three ways to engage with Petrarch and the past...

Letter to petrarch

Just as Petrarch wrote letters to the Roman orator Cicero, here students wrote letters to Petrarch congratulating him or blaming him for everything he represents about Western European society—good or bad.

PANFILO

tours of the imagination

Petrarch's description of Rome in Letter VI.2 conjures a city in which all of Rome's history is visible in a single "walking tour". Here students wrote similar imaginative walking tours of places important to them.

Pampinea

EMilia

Dioneo

symbols of empire

Petrarch and Cola were both skilled at leveraging the symbolism of ancient Rome for their own purposes. Here students chose a Roman symbol for historical analysis: what did it originally mean? what does it mean now? how does meaning change over time?