SOURCE: Peter Hainsworth, in an introduction to Petrarch the Poet: An Introduction to the Rerum Vulgarium Fragmenta, Routledge, 1988, pp. 1-29.

In the following essay, Hainsworth focuses on Petrarch's Rerum vulgarium fragmenta, which is commonly known as the Canzoniere or Rime sparse. Hainsworth discusses the context in the which the poems were written and examines Petrarch's concern with humanism and the meaning of poetry.

Two Languages

Italian literature of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance is composed in the shadow of Latin. The shadow may seem sometimes shorter, sometimes longer, but it is inevitably there, evoking an alternately benign and threatening presence whose roots stretch back into antiquity and whose branches extend across Europe. Latin asserts repeatedly that it has the exclusive right to knowledge and excellence, and continually demands that its authors and authority should be attended to. When it seems most displaced, it infiltrates the less prestigious...