The Canzoniere (Selections) and The Ascent of Mont Ventoux

Introduction

The Canzoniere gathers the three hundred and sixty-six Italian lyrics Petrarch wrote over his lifetime, three hundred and seventeen of them sonnets, most addressed to Laura: her beauty in life, his longing and despair, his mourning after her death, and at last a turn to prayer. Petrarch brought the sonnet to perfection, and the 'Petrarchan sonnet' became the model that European poets vied to imitate; Shakespeare, Ronsard and Spenser all bear its mark. With it is his Latin letter on the ascent of Mont Ventoux: in 1336 he climbed to the summit in Provence, looked out over the mountains, opened Augustine's Confessions at random, and read a passage that turned him from the landscape to his own soul. The letter is often taken as the beginning of the Renaissance.