My secret book / Francesco Petrarca ; edited and translated by Nicholas Mann.
2016
PQ4496.E29 S33 2016 (Mapit)
Available at General Collection
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Details
Title
My secret book / Francesco Petrarca ; edited and translated by Nicholas Mann.
Uniform Title
Secretum. English
ISBN
9780674003460 (hardcover)
0674003462 (hardcover)
0674003462 (hardcover)
Published
Cambridge, Massachusetts : Harvard University Press, 2016.
Language
English
Language Note
English translations on rectos with Latin originals on versos.
Description
xvii, 283 pages ; 21 cm.
Call Number
PQ4496.E29 S33 2016
Dewey Decimal Classification
853/.1
Summary
"It was by his own account during this period, sometime in 1342-43, when he was still resident at Vaucluse, that Petrarch was visited by a beautiful woman whom he quickly identified as Truth personified. They were immediately joined by an elderly man who turned out to be St Augustine (354-430 AD), to whose writings Petrarch had long been devoted. These facts are related in the Secretum, his Secret Book, which he apparently did not intend for publication, and to which he gives the subtitle "The private conflict of my thoughts." It records the extended discussion that took place in the silent presence of Truth between himself and the Saint, or more exactly between two characters named Franciscus and Augustinus: an intense but somewhat inconclusive three-day dialogue divided into three books and ranging widely over Petrarch's unhappiness and personal problems. Like most of his writings, and in particular those in Latin, the Secretum contains significant elements of autobiography; indeed it is the most intimate and the most fascinating of Petrarch's essays in self-scrutiny. Like most of his accounts of himself, it reveals a writer carefully crafting the image that he will bequeath to posterity, and in this respect is closely complementary to his vernacular lyrics, his letters, and the less personal representations of himself in his Latin treatises. And finally, like almost all his works, it shows evidence of an extended period of composition and revision, and thus obliges us to recognize the chronological distance between the events and the final form in which they are described."--Provided by publisher.
Bibliography, etc. Note
Includes bibliographical references (pages 275-277) and index.
Added Author
Mann, Nicholas, editor, translator.
Series
I Tatti Renaissance library ; 72.
Record Appears in
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Table of Contents
Poem
Book I
Book II
Book III.
Book I
Book II
Book III.