Petrarch and the Textual Origins of Interpretation

Drawn from those delivered at The Italian Academy at Columbia U. in December 2004, these ten essays focus on Petrarch's hermeneutics and philology as expressed in the interplay between his texts and their material preparation and reception. Topics include Petrarch's editorial lapses and narrative impositions as compared to Wilkins's doctrine of the nine forms of the rerum vulgarium fragmenta, Wilkins's approach to the manuscripts of Canzoniere, erasures in MS Vaticano Latino 3195, scribal practices and book formats in three manuscripts of vernacular poems, Petrarch's approach to Boccaccio in the Triumphs, the grammar beneath the rerum vulgarium fragmenta (in Italian), Petrarch's imaginary arts, Andreae and Familiares IV 15 and 16, traditional materials for autobiographies (in Italian), and Pertrarchan hermeneutics and the rediscovery of intimacy. The result is well-balanced, rigorous, and interesting even to non-experts. Annotation ©2008 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Teodolinda Barolini, Ph.D. (1978) Columbia University, is Lorenzo Da Ponte Professor of Italian at Columbia University and the author ofDante’s Poets (Princeton, 1984), The Undivine Comedy (Princeton, 1992) andDante and the Origins of Italian Literary Culture (Fordham, 2006).H. Wayne Storey, Ph.D. (1983) Columbia University, is Professor of Italian at Indiana University and Editor-in-Chief ofTextual Cultures. His studies of Petrarch include Transcription and Visual Poetics (Garland, 1993), “Voce e grafia nei Triumphi”, and his essays in the 2003-2004 facsimile edition of the Rerum vulgarium fragmenta (Antenore).