Gianfranco Contini Volgorde van de boeken (chronologisch)

Considerato a lungo di autore anonimo, oggi il poemetto Il Fiore venne comunemente attribuito a Dante. Il testo ci è tramandato in un unico manoscritto, custodito prima a Digione, quindi nell’abbazia di Clairvaux e poi acquisito dallo Stato francese, si trova oggi a Montpellier. Risalente agli ultimi decenni del Duecento, l’opera si compone di 232 sonetti ed è una parafrasi del Roman de la Rose, uno dei poemi più famosi di tutto il medioevo scritto da due poeti diversi nel corso del Duecento. La vicenda muove da un sogno del poeta e racconta la conquista della donna amata, della quale la rosa simboleggia il sesso. Il Detto d’Amore è un poemetto in settenari sull’amor cortese e riprende alcune parti del poema francese tralasciate dall’autore de Il Fiore.

David Young's version of Petrarch will refresh our images of the West's crucial lyric poet. We are given a Petrarch in our own vernacular, with echoes of Wyatt, Shakespeare, and many who come after. --Harold Bloom Ineffable sweetness, bold, uncanny sweetness that came to my eyes from her lovely face; from that day on I'd willingly have closed them, never to gaze again at lesser beauties. --from Sonnet 116 Petrarch was born in Tuscany and grew up in the south of France. He lived his life in the service of the church, traveled widely, and during his lifetime was a revered, model man of letters. Petrarch's greatest gift to posterity was his Rime in vita e morta di Madonna Laura, the cycle of poems popularly known as his songbook. By turns full of wit, languor, and fawning, endlessly inventive, in a tightly composed yet ornate form they record their speaker's unrequited obsession with the woman named Laura. In the centuries after it was designed, the Petrarchan sonnet, as it would be known, inspired the greatest love poets of the English language-from the times of Spenser and Shakespeare to our own. David Young's fresh, idiomatic version of Petrarch's poetry is the most readable and approachable that we have. In his skillful hands, Petrarch almost sounds like a poet out of our own tradition bringing the wheel of influence full circle.

Italian