NAVIGATION:

Index of Petrarch Material

Index of Dr. Weller's Class Material

 

Love According to Petrarch In general:

• Petrarch's real subject is the vagaries and contradictions of the divided self.
• Human love displaces divine love as the most important thing in life.

The Petrarchan experience:

• Love is at first sight. It enters through the eyes into the heart and never goes away.
• Love is never satisfied. The lady is unavailable, or hard-hearted, or changeable.
• Love is suffering. The lover hopes that the lady will see his suffering and have pity on him, and give him her love. Sometimes the lover thinks that this miracle is about to happen, but it never does, and he is caught in a conflicted state, often stated paradoxically as "freezing fire."
• Despite, or maybe even because, love is suffering, the lover stays true to love because he is helpless to do otherwise, and it inspires him to creativity (writing poetry), and because being in love makes life worthwhile.

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Index of Petrarchan Love Lyrics

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Petrarch (1304 - 1374)

• #1 ("You who hear the sound, in scattered rhymes").
• #3 ("It was on that day when the sun's ray").
• #4 ("What infinite providence and art").
• #7 ("Greed and sleep and slothful beds").
• #12 ("If my life of bitter torment and of tears").
• #35 ("Alone and thoughtful, through the most desolate fields").
• #61 ("Blessed be the day, and the month, and the year").
• #62 ("Heavenly Father, after the lost days").
• #90 ("She let her gold hair scatter in the breeze").
• #126 ("Clear, sweet fresh water").

Thomas Wyatt (1503 - 1542)

• "They flee from me, that sometime did me seek"

Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey (1517 - 1547)

• "Alas! so all things now do hold their peace"

Pierre de Ronsard (1524 - 1585)

• "When you are very old"

Sir Walter Raleigh (1552 - 1618)

• "Nature, that washed her hands in milk"

Samuel Daniel (1562 - 1619)

• Delia, #38: "When men shall find thy flower, thy glory pass,"
• Delia, #52: "Let others sing of knights and paladins"

William Shakespeare (1564 - 1616)

• Sonnet #18, "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?"
• Sonnet #30, "When to the sessions of sweet silent thought"
• Sonnet #130, "My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun"
• Sonnet #138, "When my love swears she is made of truth"

Jerry Lee Lewis (1935 - )

• "Chantilly Lace" (1958)

Keri Hilson (1982 - )

• "Knock You Down"