Delicious translations of a selection of Petrarch's love sonnets.

Francesco Petrarca (1304-74) has been described as the 'first modern man of letters' and his influence on the European lyric tradition has been widespread. The poems of his Canzoniere, closely associated as they are with the enigmatic figure of Laura, were soon to become the models for love-poetry in nearly all major European literatures in the Renaissance. The new translations here use the same rhyme schemes and broadly the same metres as those used by Petrarch himself. The facing English texts are thus not intended to be absolutely literal, but to reflect the inner meanings and moods of the originals, with some further literal translations of difficult passages added in the notes. The notes to the poems also cover their likely dates, mythological allusions, certain background settings, and a number of other calendrical and structural features which appear to emerge from the actual sequencing of the collection itself. There is also a section on old Italian syntax. and other linguistic aids. The new translation of Petrarch's Rerum Vulgarian Fragmenta is in two separate volumes.

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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.