Reviews

Selections from the Canzoniere and Other Works by Francesco Petrarch

wyn_wolf21's review

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challenging emotional funny hopeful reflective sad slow-paced

3.75

moodreader04's review

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emotional reflective sad fast-paced

4.0

I had to read this book for a college class, but I can guarantee that I didn't regret it.  This book contains two letters and a selection of poems by Petrarch, one of the pioneers in the Renaissance movement.
   Although I have read the translation from Italian to English, Petrarch's writing is still very engaging and fluid, with his mentions of moments in the author's life such as his unrequited love for Laura to references to works from ancient Greece and Rome and his will to rescue such cultures.  Certainly a book that is worth reading and that will not take up much of your time, as in addition to being fluid, the writing is also a short book.

kristenmtan's review

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4.0

4.5/5
read for hum. i cant believe im about to say this but petrarch is so sexy

rileysradreads's review

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challenging emotional reflective medium-paced

2.75

belliz4's review

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4.0

I read this for one of my literature classes in school and was pleasantly surprised at how much I loved it. As someone who is extremely picky, and a bit biased against, when it comes to poetry, I was not expecting to like it at all. But, once I started reading it I was captivated. For something that written so long ago, it had aspects to it that one could relate to in modern times. 4/5 stars. Highly recommend.

wrengaia's review

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5.0

Immensely intense. Painfully wrought with an almost selfish painful yearning and longing and mourning - perhaps mourning more for the emotions once felt than for she who evoked them.

Very Orsino. Very beautiful.

courtneydoss's review

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4.0

Petrarch was an Italian writer and poet from the 1300s, a contemporary of Boccaccio, and apparently was used as a basis for standardizing the language that would become modern Italian, done by Pietro Bembo, who was also the lover of Lucrezia Borgia. The more you know.

This particular collection of his work is tiny. It includes two essays and snippets of his poetry. The poetry is very good considering it is a translation and several hundred years old. It is filled with the melancholy ache of unrequited love and the grief that follows the death of the object of his infatuation, Laura. I think that it would probably have been much more beautiful and poetic in its original language, but there were several portions of the poems that stuck out to me as particularly lovely.
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