The Worlds of Petrarch.

Formulator of a modern mode of thinking while still rooted in the medieval world he was transforming, Petrarch is one of the most elusive and complex personalities of European intellectual history. The multifaceted and forever contradictory writings of Petrarch have been the subject of much speculation among scholars of medieval and Renaissance culture. A provocative and highly inclusive work, Giuseppe Mazzotta's The Worlds of Petrarch is a valuable addition to the rich Petrarchan scholarship encompassing studies Mazzotta has written throughout his career as well as new ones written specifically for this monograph. The Worlds of Petrarch treats all the major concerns of this pivotal figure: poetry, history, politics, religion, rhetoric, music, philosophy, his modernity and medievalism, his love for Italy and ancient Rome, and his fascination with classical antiquities.

According to Mazzotta, the operative principle of Petrarch's thought, a principle that was to become the elexir vitae of modernity, was the centrality of the individual. Events, beliefs, and values are all reflected through the prism of Petrarch's own subjectivity. The conflicting pulls, the inner tensions, the changeableness of moods, the ever springing of new desires and forms peculiar to Petrarch's temperament make it impossible for him to formulate a stable figuration of the self. The Petrarchan emphasis on the self, Mazzotta argues, leads not to a unified whole, as is assumed by most Petrarchan scholars, but to a unity of fragments, which Mazzotta characterizes as "worlds." These fragments are interlaced by the loom of Petrarch's language and find correlation in the power of his rhetoric which, in Petrarch, transcends the periphery of the art of persuasion and becomes a value-charged skill that approximates epistemology.

This definition of Petrarch's thought on the part of Mazzotta allows for a novel exegetic enterprise that leads to fascinating conclusions: the centrality of rhetoric in the Petrarchan opus, the epistemological validity of poetry, the self as the sole source of questions of value, the nexus between love and thought with love being the mobilizer of thought, and the fragmentation of the poetics of the Canzoniere, a fragmentation that mirrors the larger splintering of the collective writing of the poet. While analyzing the inner forces of the Petrarchan self, Mazzotta is able to advance suggestive interpretations of Petrarch's conception of Laura, of his role as a poet, and of his ever-present attraction to the secular and the religious.

In probing the "worlds" of Petrarch, Mazzotta does not overlook the key medieval literary figures (Augustine, Isidore of Seville, Bonaventure, Hugh of St Victor, Dante) so pivotal to Petrarchan thought. More importantly he does not lose sight of the trajectory of Petrarch's modernity. He thus looks backward to the classical authors who fostered it and forward to the post-medieval writers who benefitted from it. All the while he has presented many modern studies on Petrarch in whose context he formulates his own theories and speculations. Mazzotta's exegesis is enriched by the etymological interpretation of key terms, such as cultural dulcedo, amor de lonh, and epoche, and by the description of important cultural subjects, such as the epistolary genre, stoicism, the myth of Eurydice, and the literary implications of poeta-theologus. The result of this manifold and thorough investigation of Petrarch's writings is a well-documented and highly learned monograph.

Mazzotta is at his best when analyzing the philosophical and poetic works of Petrarch: De vita solitara, De otio religioso, the Secretum, Bucolicum carmen, the Trionfi, but especially the Canzoniere. Indeed, his critical pieces on the major poems of the Canzoniere are specimens of superior scholarship, being at once penetrating, original, and illuminating. By virtue of their conflicting, allegorical, and highly stylized manner, these works lend themselves well to Mazzotta's interpretive formula of a subjective, rhetorical, and contradictory Petrarch. However, Mazzotta is less successful in his assessment of the politico-historical works of Petrarch, such as De viris illustribus, On His Own Ignorance and That of Many Others and some of the letters of the De rebus familiaribus libri which, as repositories of historical facts and events, possess a concreteness and a delineation lacking in the philosophical and poetic works. As a result, they are less receptive to Mazzotta's interpretive formula of Petrarchan subjectivism and allegorizing. However, these somewhat qualified readings of some of Petrarch's works are minor infelicities that do not lessen the overall value of Mazzotta's book. The Worlds of Petrarch is provocative and instructive throughout. Reading it, one is energized by the comprehensive reconstruction of Petrarch's thought and by the savvy assessment of the ideological forces that molded it. The work, therefore, is of value not just to the Petrarchan specialist, but to the scholar of medieval and Renaissance culture in general.

ANGELO MAZZOCCO Mount Holyoke College