- Title Pages
- Dedication
- Figures
- Notes on Contributors
- Introduction
- 1 Petrarch and the ‘barbari Britanni’
- 2 Petrarch <i>solitarius</i>
- 3 The Ethics of Ignorance: Petrarch’s Epicurus and Averroës and the Structures of the <i>De Sui Ipsius et Multorum Ignorantia</i>
- 4 Petrarch’s Second (and Third) Death
- 5 Poets and Heroes in Petrarch’s <i>Africa:</i> Classical and Medieval Sources
- 6 Petrarch Reading Dante: The Ascent of Mont Ventoux (<i>Familiares</i> 4. 1)
- 7 Petrarch and Cino da Pistoia: A Moment in the Pre-history of the <i>Canzoniere</i>
- 8 Petrarch and the Italian Reformation
- 9 Petrarch, Sidney, Bruno
- 10 Renaissance Misogyny and the Rejection of Petrarch
- 11 Impersonations of Laura in Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-century Italy
- 12 Other Petrarchs in Early Modern England
- 13 Thomas Watson’s <i>Hekatompathia</i> and European Petrarchism
- 14 The Comedy of Astrophil: Petrarchan Motifs in Sidney’s <i>Astrophil and Stella</i>
- 15 Sidney, Spenser, and Political Petrarchism
- 16 Petrarch and the Scottish Renaissance Sonnet
- 17 Leopardi and Petrarch
- 18 Between Tradition and Transgression: Amelia Rosselli’s Petrarch
- 19 Nineteenth-century British Biographies of Petrarch
- 20 Translating Petrarch
- Index
Nineteenth-century British Biographies of Petrarch
Nineteenth-century British Biographies of Petrarch
- Chapter:
- (p.318) (p.319) 19 Nineteenth-century British Biographies of Petrarch
- Source:
- Petrarch in Britain
- Author(s):
Martin Mclaughlin
- Publisher:
- British Academy
This chapter documents the extraordinary enthusiasm for biographies of Petrarch in Great Britain in the three-quarters of a century between 1775 and 1850. It explains that during the late eighteenth century Petrarch was more popular than Dante in Britain but Dante soon eclipsed his successor after the rise of Romanticism. It considers works on Petrarch including those of Ugo Foscolo and Walter Savage Landor and suggests some reasons why Petrarch's popularity died out in Britain so suddenly and so radically in the second half of the nineteenth century.
Keywords: Petrarch, biographies, Great Britain, Dante, Romanticism, Ugo Foscolo, Walter Savage Landor
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- Title Pages
- Dedication
- Figures
- Notes on Contributors
- Introduction
- 1 Petrarch and the ‘barbari Britanni’
- 2 Petrarch <i>solitarius</i>
- 3 The Ethics of Ignorance: Petrarch’s Epicurus and Averroës and the Structures of the <i>De Sui Ipsius et Multorum Ignorantia</i>
- 4 Petrarch’s Second (and Third) Death
- 5 Poets and Heroes in Petrarch’s <i>Africa:</i> Classical and Medieval Sources
- 6 Petrarch Reading Dante: The Ascent of Mont Ventoux (<i>Familiares</i> 4. 1)
- 7 Petrarch and Cino da Pistoia: A Moment in the Pre-history of the <i>Canzoniere</i>
- 8 Petrarch and the Italian Reformation
- 9 Petrarch, Sidney, Bruno
- 10 Renaissance Misogyny and the Rejection of Petrarch
- 11 Impersonations of Laura in Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-century Italy
- 12 Other Petrarchs in Early Modern England
- 13 Thomas Watson’s <i>Hekatompathia</i> and European Petrarchism
- 14 The Comedy of Astrophil: Petrarchan Motifs in Sidney’s <i>Astrophil and Stella</i>
- 15 Sidney, Spenser, and Political Petrarchism
- 16 Petrarch and the Scottish Renaissance Sonnet
- 17 Leopardi and Petrarch
- 18 Between Tradition and Transgression: Amelia Rosselli’s Petrarch
- 19 Nineteenth-century British Biographies of Petrarch
- 20 Translating Petrarch
- Index