Petrarch

Francesco Petrarca  (20 July 1304 – 19 July 1374), known in English as Petrarch, was an Italian scholar, poet, and one of the earliest Renaissance humanists. 

Petrarch is often called the "father of humanism".There are many popular examples, for a recent one this review  of  Carol Quillen's Rereading the Renaissance Based on Petrarch's works, and to a lesser extent those of Dante Alighieri and Giovanni Boccaccio, Pietro Bembo in the 16th century created the model for the modern Italian language. Petrarch is credited with developing the sonnet with his Canzoniere to a level of perfection that would be unsurpassed to this day and spreading its use to other European languages. His sonnets were admired and imitated throughout Europe during the Renaissance and became a model for lyrical poetry. Petrarch was also known for being one of the first people to call the Middle Ages the Dark Ages, although the negative myth as we know it today is largely the legacy of romantic literature.

 References 

 Other websites 

 Canzoniere (different edition) and other works
 Petrarch and Laura  Multi-lingual site including many translated works (letters, poems, books) in the public domain and biography, pictures, music.  
 Petrarch from the Catholic Encyclopedia.
 Excerpts from his works and letters 
 The Petrarchan Grotto
 Francesco Petrarca (Petrarch) (1304-1374)

 Poems From The Canzoniere, translated by Tony Kline.
 Petrarch - the poet who lost his head April 6, 2004 article in The Guardian regarding the exhumation of Petrarch's remains.
 Francesco Petrarca  at The Online Library of Liberty
 De remediis utriusque fortunae, Cremonae, B. de Misintis ac Caesaris Parmensis, 1492. 

Category:1304 births
Category:1374 deaths
Category:Italian poets
Category:Medieval poets
Category:14th-century Italian writers