Letters on Familiar Matters (Rerum Familiarium Libri): Vol. 3: Books XVII-XXIV
ISBN: 9781599103020
Platform/Publisher: JSTOR / Italica Press, Inc.
Digital rights: Users: unlimited; Printing: chapter; Download: chapter
Subjects: Petrarca Francesco 1304-1374 -- Correspondence; Authors Italian -- To 1500 -- Correspondence;

This translation makes available for the first time to English readers Petrarch's earliest and perhaps most important collection of prose letters. Written for the most part between 1325 and 1366, and organized into twenty-four books, the collection represents a portrait of the artist as a young man seen through the eyes of the mature artist. Whether in the writing of poetry, or being crowned poet laureate, or in confessing his faults, describing the dissolution of the kingdom of Naples, summoning up the grandeur of ancient Rome, or in writing to pope or emperor, Petrarch was always the consummate artist, deeply concerned with creating a desired effect by means of a dignified gracefulness, and always conscious that his private life and thoughts could be the object of high art and public interest. This complete translation by Aldo S. Bernardo has long been out of print and is reproduced here in its entirety in three volumes. Vol. 3, Books XVII-XXIV. Introduction, notes, bibliography.


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