ФЕНОМЕН ПЕТРАРКІЗМУ У СВІТЛІ ТЕОРЕТИЧНИХ ІДЕЙ ДЕНІ ДЕ РУЖМОНА

Abstract

The proposed research summarizes and interprets the ideas of the famous Swiss philosopher D. de Rougemont, regarding the genesis and hidden mystical meanings of the concept of courtly love in European culture, the most fully embodied, according to the researcher, in the myth of Tristan and Isolde, comprehensively analyzed by him in the work "Love and Western Culture". The purpose of the research is to expand the field of application of the scientistʼs methodological tools and extrapolate his theory to the ideological and aesthetic phenomenon of Petrarchism and, above all, to the Petrarchan concept of love and its rhetoric. The results of the investigation are as follows. It is established that the very first version of the Petrarchan love text – the lyrical collection of F. Petrarch "Canzoniere" still retained a rather noticeable connection with the doctrine of Catharism. F. Petrarch was well acquainted with the works of the Provençal troubadours – direct relayers of the principles of Catharism in medieval Europe – and borrowed from them the fundamental conventions of the concept of courtly love, which at the time of its birth was a religion in the full sense of the term, a historically determined Christian heresy. The heresy of the Cathars consisted in interpreting love as a push beyond the visible world, towards the divine, which alone deserves love, therefore love for an earthly being was perceived as unworthy and notoriously unhappy. F. Petrarch described his feelings for Laura exactly in this way, and only after her death he began to feel free, because only then the way to the Creator opened before him. On the other hand, in the works of F. Petrarchʼs followers, these mythical layers are already lost, so the researchers conclude that Petrarchism was inherited by the post-Renaissance poets not as a worldview system, but primarily as a language strategy. It is proved that the rhetoric of Petrarchan poetry in various national literatures and individual authorsʼ poetics remained unchanged, while its ideological and thematic content can sometimes vary to the point of direct denial of the fundamental postulates of the courtly concept of love, such as, for example, the unrequited and Platonic character of the love feeling (as in the poetry of J. Donne) or a protest against the institution of marriage (as in the lyrics of E. Spenser). It is also shown that the genetic kinship of courtly rhetoric and European mysticism, both of which are directly related to the medieval Christian heresies, led to the fact that the Petrarchan language became at the same time the language of the spiritual lyrics of the European poets.