Work record
The Canzoniere (Sonnets and Canzoni), with the Triumphs
PetrarchThe Canzoniere (Sonnets and Canzoni), with the Triumphs by Petrarch (c. 1327–1374)The Canzoniere, which Petrarch himself titled Rerum vulgarium fragmenta, fragments in the vernacular, is a sequence of 366 Italian poems, chiefly sonnets with canzoni, sestinas, ballate and madrigals, that he collected, revised and arranged over…c. 1327-1374 · Medieval · Poetry · Italian
Abstract
Background. A scholar attached to the papal city of Avignon, Petrarch wrote Italian verse throughout his adult life while composing his learned works in Latin. He kept polishing and reordering the collection until he died at Arquà.
Content. A lady glimpsed in church in 1327 becomes the centre of a lifetime's verse. Early pieces dwell on longing, paradox, solitude in the Provençal hills, and wordplay on the laurel. Some address Italy's warring rulers or Roman patrons. After the 1348 pestilence takes her, she returns in dreams as a heavenly comforter, and the poet moves toward penitence, closing with a hymn to the Mother of God. Allegorical pageants then show each power yielding to a greater, ending in Eternity.
Form. Mostly fourteen-line poems built on octave and sestet, rendered here by numerous English hands, often several per poem.
Themes. Desire and its restlessness, fame, time and death, conversion, and the ordering of love toward God.
Reception. Imitated across Europe for three centuries; English sonneteers built on him.
For students. Begin with the opening and closing poems, then compare translations. Because this edition often prints several English versions of one sonnet, it is ideal for asking what a translator gains and loses. Read the Good Friday sonnets with Augustine in mind, and follow how the beloved becomes a guide upward rather than a rival.
Key figures
- The poet: Petrarch as lover and penitent
- Laura: The beloved, seen in 1327, dead in 1348
- Love: The personified god who conquers the poet
- The Virgin Mary: Addressed in the closing prayer
Summary
The Canzoniere, which Petrarch himself titled Rerum vulgarium fragmenta, fragments in the vernacular, is a sequence of 366 Italian poems, chiefly sonnets with canzoni, sestinas, ballate and madrigals, that he collected, revised and arranged over some forty years until his death in 1374. Its subject is his love for Laura, a woman he says he first saw in the church of Saint Clare at Avignon on Good Friday, 6 April 1327, and who died on the same date in 1348, probably of the plague. The library's text is the first complete English version, published by Bohn in 1859, which gathered the best existing translations by many hands, chiefly Major Robert Macgregor, and often prints two or three versions of one sonnet so that readers can compare them; Petrarch's six Triumphs follow the sequence. The first part, the poems to Laura in life, opens with a sonnet of confession: the poet asks those who hear his scattered rhymes for pity and pardon, for he now sees that the world's joy is a passing dream. The poems that follow trace the paradoxes of his love, freezing and burning, hoping and despairing, seeking solitude in the hills and streams of Vaucluse and finding Love there before him. He plays on Laura's name and the laurel, the tree of Apollo and of poets' crowns, so that love and fame are bound together. Other poems turn outward, such as the canzone to the princes of Italy, torn by mercenary wars, which begs God to look with pity on the land. The second part, after Laura's death, turns to mourning, memory and visions of her in heaven, where she becomes a guide toward God rather than a rival to Him. The sequence ends with sonnets of repentance and a great canzone to the Virgin Mary, in which the poet asks the Mother of Christ to commend his last breath to her Son. The Triumphs, written in Dante's terza rima, describe processions in which Love is overcome by Chastity, Chastity by Death, Death by Fame, Fame by Time, and Time by Eternity. Petrarch's lyrics shaped European love poetry for three centuries; the sonnets of Wyatt, Sidney, Spenser and Shakespeare all answer him. For Christian readers the Canzoniere is a drama of the divided heart, close in spirit to Augustine's Confessions, which Petrarch carried with him: it shows how earthly love can lead toward God or away from Him, and it ends in prayer.
Virtues in this work
Plot or Argument
- To Laura in Life
Sonnets of confession and first love; the Good Friday meeting; solitude at Vaucluse; the laurel and poetic fame; political canzoni to Italy and to Rome; prayers for a changed life.
- To Laura in Death
Grief at Laura's death in 1348; visions of her in heaven consoling him; memories at Vaucluse; growing repentance and longing for God.
- The closing prayers
Sonnets confessing the wasted years and the great canzone to the Virgin Mary that ends the sequence.
- The Triumphs
Six allegorical processions in terza rima: Love, Chastity, Death, Fame, Time and Eternity, each overcoming the one before.
Characters
- The poet, speaker
Petrarch himself, lover, scholar and penitent.
- Laura, beloved
The lady first seen at Avignon in 1327, who died in 1348 and appears to him from heaven.
- Love (Amor), personification
The god of love who wounds, pursues and triumphs over the poet.
- The Virgin Mary, intercessor
The Mother of Christ, addressed in the final canzone.
- Giacomo and Stefano Colonna, patrons
Members of the Roman family Petrarch served and addressed in several poems.
Lessons
The divided heart
Petrarch loves Laura and loves God, and the sequence records the struggle between the two. Like Augustine he confesses that his heart was restless.
- What does the first sonnet confess?
- Where does the poet pray to be turned to a better life?
- How does this compare with Augustine, Confessions VIII?
The sonnet
Petrarch perfected the sonnet of an eight-line octave and a six-line sestet, with a turn between them. English poets borrowed and changed the form.
- Find the turn in one sonnet.
- How do different translators handle the same sonnet?
- How does Shakespeare's sonnet form differ?
From earthly love to eternity
After Laura's death she becomes a guide toward heaven, and the Triumphs end in Eternity. Love is meant to be ordered upward.
- How does Laura change in the poems after her death?
- Why does the sequence end with a prayer to the Virgin?
- How does Dante's Beatrice compare with Laura?
Context
Petrarch lived during the Avignon papacy, the Hundred Years' War and the Black Death of 1348, which killed Laura and many of his friends. He served the Colonna family and the Church, held clerical benefices, and spent long periods at Vaucluse, Milan, Venice, Padua and Arquà.
Composition
He wrote the Italian lyrics over about forty years and kept revising their order; his final arrangement survives in a manuscript partly in his own hand (Vatican Library, Vat. lat. 3195). The Triumphs occupied him from about 1351 until his death. The 1859 Bohn volume collected translations by Macgregor, Lady Dacre, Charlemont, Nott, Wrangham, Wollaston, Capel Lofft and many others; the Gutenberg text follows the 1879 reprint.
Reception
Petrarchism, the imitation of his themes and forms, spread through Italy, France, Spain and England: Wyatt and Surrey introduced the sonnet to English, and Sidney, Spenser and Shakespeare wrote sequences in answer to him. Chaucer adapted one of his sonnets in Troilus and Criseyde.
Comparisons
- The Divine Comedy
Dante's Beatrice leads him to God; Petrarch's Laura becomes a heavenly guide only after long struggle.
- Sonnets
Shakespeare's sequence both imitates and mocks Petrarchan praise of the beloved.
- Confessions
Petrarch's favourite book; his sequence is a confession of a divided will.
- Troilus and Criseyde
Chaucer's Troilus sings a version of Petrarch's sonnet If no love is, O God, what feel I so.
- The Faerie Queene, Book I
Spenser, author of the Petrarchan sequence Amoretti, also translated Petrarch's visions.
Quotes
Frequently cited
“That the world's joy is but a flitting dream.”
Frequently cited
“Blest be the day, and blest the month, the year, The spring, the hour, the very moment blest,”
Frequently cited
“Alone, and lost in thought, the desert glade Measuring I roam with ling'ring steps and slow;”
Frequently cited
“Beautiful Virgin! clothed with the sun, Crown'd with the stars,”
“Have mercy, Lord! on my unworthy ills: Fix all my thoughts in contemplation high; How on the cross this day a Saviour died.”
“Weeping, I still revolve the seasons flown In vain idolatry of mortal things;”
For Students
A reading companion for classical Christian high school students. See the student guide.
Reading Guide
Watch for
- The confession and request for pardon in Sonnet I.
- Good Friday and the cross in Sonnets III and XLVIII.
- The puns on Laura, the laurel and l'aura, the breeze.
- How Laura changes after her death.
- The final canzone to the Virgin and the Triumph of Eternity.
Key terms and names
- Canzoniere
- Songbook: the usual name for Petrarch's Rerum vulgarium fragmenta.
- Petrarchan sonnet
- Fourteen lines divided into an octave and a sestet, with a turn between.
- Canzone
- A long lyric of several elaborate stanzas with a short closing stanza.
- Sestina
- A poem of six stanzas that repeat the same six end-words in rotating order.
- Volta
- The turn in thought between octave and sestet.
- Terza rima
- Dante's interlocking three-line stanza, used in the Triumphs.
- Humanism
- The Renaissance revival of classical learning, which Petrarch led.
Seminar Questions
- Comprehension When and where did Petrarch first see Laura, according to the poems?
- Comprehension What does the poet ask for in the first sonnet?
- Comprehension What overcomes what in the six Triumphs?
- Interpretation Why does Petrarch connect his love with Good Friday?
- Interpretation How does Laura's role change after her death?
- Interpretation Why do you think the sequence ends with a prayer to the Virgin?
- Big Question Can romantic love lead a person toward God, or must it be given up?
Faith Connections
- 1 John 2:15-17 (Scripture)
The world and its desires pass away: the poet's confession that worldly joy is a dream.
- Revelation 12:1 (Scripture)
A woman clothed with the sun and crowned with stars: the image behind the canzone to the Virgin.
- Psalm 51 (Scripture)
The penitential psalm that the late sonnets of repentance echo.
- Augustine, Confessions (Church Fathers)
Petrarch's guide: our heart is restless until it rests in God.
Logic and Rhetoric
Central argument: Earthly love, intense and beautiful, cannot satisfy the heart and is overtaken by death and time; the poet who has loved a mortal creature too much must confess, repent and turn to the eternal love of God, with Laura and the Virgin as guides.
Rhetorical device: oxymoron. Petrarch's lover freezes in fire and burns in ice, a figure of paradox that became the signature of Petrarchan poetry.
Debate: Resolved: that Petrarch's love for Laura led him closer to God.
Memory Work
That the world's joy is but a flitting dream.
Beautiful Virgin! clothed with the sun, Crown'd with the stars,
Writing Prompts
Essay: Trace the poet's journey from the first sonnet to the canzone to the Virgin, and explain how the sequence orders earthly and heavenly love.
Comparison with Sonnets: Compare a Petrarch sonnet with a Shakespeare sonnet: how does each poet describe the beloved and the passing of time?
Creative Prompts
- Classroom
Give groups two English versions of the same sonnet from the text; each group chooses the better translation and defends its choice.
- Essay
Is Petrarch's love for Laura a path toward God or a distraction from Him? Use at least three poems from both parts.
- Poetry
Write a Petrarchan sonnet (octave and sestet with a turn) on something you love that is passing away.
- Dialogue
Write a conversation between Petrarch and Augustine, as in Petrarch's Secretum, about his love for Laura and his love of fame.
Further Reading
- Petrarch's Lyric Poems, Robert M. Durling (trans.)
Complete modern prose translation with facing Italian.
- Confessions, Augustine
The book Petrarch carried up Mont Ventoux.
- Petrarch: His Life and Times, H. C. Hollway-Calthrop
A readable older life (1907).
- Life of Petrarch, Thomas Campbell
Condensed at the front of the 1859 volume.
Verification notes
Text from Gutenberg #17650, the Bohn's Illustrated Library collection of 1859 (Gutenberg text from the 1879 reprint), poems only; Campbell's Life and the index are omitted. Poem numbering follows the Marsand order used in the volume, not the modern RVF numbers. Dates for the first sight and death of Laura are those Petrarch recorded himself.
No verification flags recorded.