Petrarch and the Birth of Western Modernity

Undergraduate / Graduate

This course offers a close reading of the theoretical works of Petrarch (known as the "father of humanism" or "first modern man") with the aim of pinpointing the literary and rhetorical skills, as well as the self-conscious agenda, that went into the proclamation of a new era in Western history: the "Renaissance." How do we at once pay homage to and overcome a time-honored past without severing our ties to history altogether? Is Petrarch's model still viable today in efforts to forge a new beginning? We will pay special attention to Petrarch's fraught relationship with religious and secular models such as Saint Augustine and Cicero, to Petrarch's legacy in notable Renaissance humanists (Pico, Poliziano, Erasmus, Montaigne, etc.), and to the correlation of Petrarchan inquiry with modern concerns and methodologies in textual and social analysis, including German hermeneutics (Gadamer) and critical theory (Gramsci).