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Updated: June 29, 2025
The forces of confusion that have dogged the pastoral in all ages show themselves where the poet tells a Christian fable in pagan guise; the antithesis of human and divine love, while suggesting Petrarch's influence over his life, is a theme that runs throughout medieval philosophy and was later embodied by Spenser in his Hymns.
In fine weather a visit to Vaucluse should by no means be omitted, not so much, perhaps, for Petrarch's sake as for the interest of the drive, and for the marvel of the fountain of the Sorgues.
Machiavelli and Boccaccio have described with all the force of their genius the material and moral effects of this terrible plague. The court of France suffered particularly from it, and the famous object of Petrarch's tender sonnets, Laura de Noves, married to Hugh de Sade, fell a victim to it at Avignon.
This Simone was a pupil of Giotto and the painter of a portrait of Petrarch's Laura, now preserved in the Laurentian library, which earned him two sonnets of eulogy. Neroccio did the landscape and figures; the other the architecture, and very fine it is. Gozzoli's predella is No. 1302. Finally, look at No. 64, which shows how prettily certain imitators of Fra Angelico could paint.
Petrarch's house in Arqua; Tasso's supposed prison in Ferrara; Shakespeare's house in Stratford, with his chair; Goethe's house in Weimar, with its furniture; Kant's old hat; the autographs of great men; these things are gaped at with interest and awe by many who have never read their works. They cannot do anything more than just gape.
Petrarch's was not the only voice that was raised urging the Pope to return from the 'Babylonian captivity, but the protest had peculiar significance from the mouth of one who stood forth as the embodiment of the new age still struggling in the throes of birth.
I do not know indeed but they may be said to be almost the first effusions of this sort of natural and personal sentiment in the language. Drummond's ought perhaps to be excepted, were they formed less closely on the model of Petrarch's, so as to be often little more than translations of the Italian poet. But Milton's Sonnets are truly his own in allusion, thought, and versification.
It was founded by Cardinal Borromeo, and contains some 60,000 volumes and 15,000 manuscripts. Among the latter are many treasures: a Latin translation of Josephus, by Rufinius, on papyrus, supposed to be eleven centuries old; a copy of the Gospels in Irish, some seven centuries old; Petrarch's copy of Virgil; and autographic letters of Ariosto, Tasso, Galileo, Cavour, Garibaldi, and many others.
Italy was then a complete patchwork of small states, and it was the dream of Petrarch's whole life to see the Peninsula united from the Alps to Spartivento. In words burning as the summer suns which shine upon his native land, and powerful as the sudden storms which sometimes sweep over her shores, he spoke out this great longing of his life.
He was then aged twenty-one, and she was twelve or thirteen; she belonged to the illustrious family of Sade. Now it so happens that the chief authority for the history of Petrarch is the Abbe de Sade, who set to work with a determination to show that his family were lineal descendants of Petrarch's Laura, and he ingenuously left out such particulars as militated against his doctrine.
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