The Canzoniere (Sonnets and Canzoni), with the Triumphs

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.

Top 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.

• 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.

• 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.

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