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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.

Franceso Petrarch (1304-1374), creator of the sonnet form, remained for more than three hundred years the most influential poet in Europe, his works more widely read than even those of Dante. This collection contains English language versions of his poems from across six centuries, in a wide variety of translations and reinterpretations. Spanning the Trionfi series and the Canzoniere - Petrarch's empassioned sonnet-sequence concerning his beloved Laura - it also includes great English poems influenced by Petrarch. From Chaucer's early adaptation of a Petrarchan sonnet in Troilus and Criseyde to the sixteenth century translations by the Earl of Surrey, Byron's mocking consideration of the Canzoniere in Don Juan and Ezra Pound's parody Silet, all provide a unique insight into the significance of the founder of the European lyric tradition.

Daring interpretations of landmark works by the most important Italian early Renaissance poet, presented in a bilingual edition.

Durling's edition of Petrarch's poems has become the standard. Readers have praised the translation of the authoritative text as graceful and accurate, conveying a real understanding of what this difficult poet is saying. The literalness of the prose translation makes this book especially useful to students who lack a full command of Italian.