Dante-Reception in Petrarch´s Canzoniere

The influence of Dante Alighieri on the poet Petrarch has long been underestimated in Petrarch research on an international level. The envisaged project aims at redefining the issue of Petrarch`s reception of Dante in his Canzoniere in the light of methodological approaches such as reception theory and intertextuality. By systematically investigating the Danteian sources, a more exhaustive body of research shall be provided on the one hand. On the other, we strive for progress in Petrarch research by departing from an approach limited exclusively to the quantitative evaluation of lists of intertextual relations. We will rather turn towards their qualitative interpretation, i.e. to the investigation of the thematic function of Dantesque intertextuality in each poem of the Canzoniere. Petrarch`s antagonistic relationship with his great ancestor can be clearly traced in the texture of his poems which deconstruct Dante`s poetry, in order to unfold their individuality and perseverance.

Dante and Petrarch as big Italian `classical writers` are the basis for the conception of Italian literature and culture. The relation between these two great poets at the close of the Middle Ages is still open to questions. It is true that Petrarch explicitly excludes any influence of Dante on his poetic oeuvre. However, for a poet who makes his honey from the pollen of many different flowers - to keep to the metaphor of the famous simile of the bee - it is entirely improbable that he would not have transformed the texts of his famous precursor into his own poetry. The extent and intensity of Petrarch`s reception of Dante in his Canzoniere, the volume of poems which lays the foundation of European love poetry and stongly influences it up to the late 18th century, shall be determined more precisely through the project L`aura dantesca. The title takes up Petrarch`s play with the name of the beloved woman: A Dantesque breeze (aura) blows through the Canzoniere and makes Laura appear as a recurrence of Dante`s Francesca and Beatrice and even of Virgin Mary in the last canto of the Divine Comedy. The aim of the project is not only the quantitative registration of all the allusions to Dante in the poems of the Canzoniere, but above all their qualitative examination. How do perception and interpretation of a poem change, if there are to identify numerous analogies to Dantesque patterns? The monography in progress closes an important gap in the research of Petrarch as well as Dante and underlines once more the often underestimated complexity of the poetry of imitation in the late Middle Ages and early Humanism. The monography in Italian language will be published just in time for the big year of Petrarch in 2004, when he celebrates his 700th birthday and it will get due attention in the course of the worldwide celebrations and international congresses.