On Meandering Paths without a Map: Petrarch's Pursuit of a Safe Haven

Abstract

This study follows Petrarch on his poetic journey along the Rerum vulgarium fragmenta. Though his wanderings have distinguished predecessors in St. Augustine and Dante, it is well known that Petrarch turned down their guidance. He draws freely on the writing of both to tackle sensitive issues relating to his personal and spiritual exile. It is, however, questionable whether their conversion provides a model for the harbor secured at the end of the lyrical collection. Petrarch's fear to release his vernacular language among the common people he frequently decried, furthermore, duplicated the weight of anxiety he associated with being vagrant and homeless. Petrarch, instead, identifies an affinity between his peripatetic life and that of the ancient seafarer Ulysses; in his devotion to the classical past and activity as a poet he turns to the demeanor of his devoted wife Penelope. By portraying himself torn between two seemingly conflicting kindred spirits, he liquidates the terms of the debate set by his predecessors and points in the direction of a resolution between the rhythm of adventure and social exchange, and the solitary and ordered tempo of weaving. With his masterful control of rhetoric and terminology, Petrarch successfully exchanges aesthetic/public for ethical ambitions. A nostalgic of classical culture, he completes his journey to a metaphorical home by extending the ideal of one formal, stable language to the vernacular, and his point of arrival becomes in turn a point of departure for humanist culture.