Document Type
Article
Publication Date
11-30-2016
Publication Title
Renaissance Quarterly
Department
Department of French and Italian
Abstract
This article demonstrates a systematic connection between the novelty of Petrarch’s authorship and his self-definition as an exile. Petrarch employs the unusual term exilium/esilio to substantiate his unprecedented claim that literature is a legally valid officium (civic role). Following Dante, Petrarch grounds his exilic authorship in the Christian discourse of peregrinatio: life as pilgrimage through exile. But Petrarch’s new officium allows him a measure of control over literary creation that no prior Italian writer had enjoyed. This is especially true of the “Canzoniere,” Petrarch’s compilation of his vernacular lyrics, whose singularity functions as a proxy for its author’s selfhood.
DOI
10.1086/690312
Dartmouth Digital Commons Citation
Hooper, Laurence E., "Exile and Petrarch’s Reinvention of Authorship" (2016). Dartmouth Scholarship. 2717.
https://digitalcommons.dartmouth.edu/facoa/2717
