Authorizing Petrarch

Kennedy chronicles the process of Petrarch's canonization from the interpretive commentaries found in rare fifteenth- and sixteenth-century editions of Rime sparse through the imitative poetry of early modern writers in Italy, France, and England. The commentaries--each employing a different Petrarch to promote a different ideological paradigm--take a wide range of approaches to important contemporaneous issues relating to politics, class, religion, love, and gender relationships.