Petrarch and His World: The Story of "The Father of Humanism"

4 Mondays, 9:00-11:20, March 8-29
SCFC 520 | Room 1415

The 21st century reader mostly knows Petrarch (1304-74) for his poems celebrating his unrequited love of Laura, a married woman who many believed had been the figment of the poet’s imagination. However, his contemporaries admired Petrarch mostly as a scholar of antiquity, a book collector and a creator of the first public library.  But Petrarch was also the father of Humanism, a traveler, a mountain climber, a man of insatiable intellectual curiosity with caustic opinions on everything: from politics to music to medicine to gardening. What fascinates us today is that we recognize in Petrarch the man of almost modern sensibilities: a soul torn by contradictory desires, self-doubt and restlessness. In this course we will look at the great poet in the context of his time and the world so different from ours and his struggles so uncannily modern.

Marina Sonkina is a former professor of Literature at Moscow State University.