Petrarch's English Laurels, 1475–1700

Book excerpt: The powerful influence of Petrarch on the development of Renaissance vernacular poetry has long been recognized as one of the major factors in early modern cultural history; this work provides a far more comprehensive catalogue of the direct evidence for that influence in England than any yet available. Following the model of Boswell's Dante's Fame in England (1999), it offers an itemized presentation, year by year, of printed citations, translations, and allusions, with complete bibliographical information, quotations of the relevant passages, and brief commentary. The most fully studied aspect of Petrarch's influence, his love poetry as a model for imitation, remains paramount: a model by turns slavishly imitated, ruthlessly mocked, and searchingly reworked, sometimes all at the same time. But the significance of other aspects of his legacy are also documented, with new fullness: notably his Latin prose works-especially his encyclopedic moral treatise On the Remedies of Both Kinds of Fortune, popular throughout the period-and his polemics against the Avignon papacy, which earned him a strong reputation in England as an angry moral prophet and champion of what would become the Protestant cause. The picture here presented provides new texture and complexity for any further discussion of Petrarch in the English Renaissance.