Description
David Youngs version of Petrarch will refresh our images of the Wests 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 Id 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.
Petrarchs 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 speakers 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 Youngs fresh, idiomatic version of Petrarchs 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.
Author: Petrarch
Binding Type: Paperback
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Published: 04/01/2005
Pages: 320
Weight: 0.8lbs
Size: 8.20h x 5.50w x 0.70d
ISBN: 9780374529611
Language: English
This title is not returnable
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