Canzoniere, << `kan` zoh NYEHR ay, >> is the greatest work of the Italian poet Petrarch (1304-1374). Of the more than 400 poems that Petrarch wrote in Italian, 366 form the Canzoniere (Book of Songs). Petrarch wrote the poems over a period of about 20 years. Most were first published in 1360. They include more than 300 sonnets, as well as short lyrics and one long poem.
Many of Petrarch’s poems are love poems in praise of a woman called Laura. Petrarch divided the collection into two parts. The first contains poems presumably written during Laura’s lifetime, and the second consists of verses written after her death. In the first part, Laura represents a fleeting image of beauty that the poet praises for her loveliness and virtue. In the second part, however, Laura assumes the role of a guide, leading her lover toward God and toward ultimate salvation.
The Canzoniere includes a roughly chronological history of the poet’s overwhelming passion for Laura and ends with a hymn to the Virgin Mary. The work expresses a haunting sense of the passage of time and of the vanity of earthly endeavors. It also shows an intense awareness of the conflict between spiritual and earthly values. The tone of the collection alternates bodily pleasure with spiritual love and religious feeling. The poems thus mirror an individual’s uneasy condition as being capable of both the lowest depths and the greatest heights.
The Canzoniere had a strong influence on European Renaissance poets, especially in England. The collection inspired cycles of love sonnets by such English writers as William Shakespeare, Sir Philip Sidney, Michael Drayton, and Edmund Spenser.
See also Petrarch.
