Renaissance Humanism and Petrarchan Poetry in the Sixteenth Century

Sixteenth-Century Literature: A New Conception of Life

Sixteenth-century literature: a new conception of life emerges in which the new conception of man is promoted by humanists. The admiration for the classical world involves a new conception of life that puts man at the center, replacing medieval theocentrism with human-centered values. The traditional scale gives way to a homocentric Renaissance worldview. The human being becomes essential; the world is seen differently. Rather than seeing pleasure as the highest end, human nature is considered a source of goodness, and the intelligence of man is viewed as sufficient unto itself. The investigation of nature becomes a challenge.

All these developments result in a collective optimism, fueled by a series of successes; the world seems to turn into a kind of paradise. Renaissance humanism manages to unify two occupations: points and weapons.

Petrarca and the Renaissance

Work: Francesco Petrarca (Petrarch), the fourteenth-century Italian poet, embodies the character and ideals of Humanism. He wrote many works in Latin with humanistic inspiration. His historical importance also rests on his vernacular compositions. His most famous vernacular work is the Songbook (the Canzoniere); another important work is the Triumphs.

The Triumphs

The Triumphs: an allegorical poem composed in chained tercets that consists of six chapters of unequal length. These chapters address the triumphs of love, chastity (shame), death, fame and eternity.

The Songbook and Influence

The Songbook: it is a collection of over 350 poems on the subject of love, inspired by Laura de Noves, the idealized woman. The first part of the Songbook deals with the anguish of love; the verses are full of sensuality and life. In the second part, after the beloved's death, the poetry becomes more sublime.

Petrarch's lines had a profound influence on Spanish poetry of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and also on other European literatures such as France and England. Petrarch became a model of European Renaissance poetry; in Spain he was imitated by the Marqués de Santillana, Juan Boscán and Garcilaso de la Vega.

The Petrarchan Tradition

The Petrarchan legacy: the Cancionero (Songbook) had enormous significance both for its subjects and for its forms, to the point of constituting a poetic style that would be called Petrarchism.

Features

• Model: rooted in medieval courtly love; it praises the idealized, distant lady and often expresses poetic lament.
• Classical resources: incorporates many references, comparisons and classical myths from Latin poets to express the joys and sorrows of unattainable, idealized, distant and impossible love.
• Expression of feeling: Petrarch succeeds in giving life to a wide range of emotions and inner experiences.
• Language: intelligence, inspiration and ingenuity are built in verse using plain, polished, transparent language full of poetic images.
• Figures of speech: frequent use of paradoxes and alliteration; metaphors and similes are used to describe the effects that love has on people.
• New metric forms: use of the hendecasyllable; the most usual composition is the sonnet. Other forms include the silva, the stanza (various lyric structures), the eclogue, the ode, the ballad and the madrigal.