Mirrors of Commentary: Renaissance Exegesis of Petrarch’s Rerum vulgarium fragmenta

Abstract

ABSTRACTThe exegetical trope of ‘commentaries as mirrors of a text’ lends itself to vast diversification. In approaching classical texts Petrarch deployed contrasting modes of cross-reference exemplified by Servius, and of interpretation in bono and in malo exemplified by St Augustine, both in late antiquity. In the early age of print, commentators on Petrarch’s Rerum vulgarium fragmenta contributed other modes developed by Italian humanists. Milanese commentators explored a sense of regional rivalry and partisanship in the poet’s work. Venetian commentators probed his life-experiences as a guide to individual poems and focused upon merits of their style. Neapolitan commentators examined virtuosic effects of their rhetorical turns. In Modena and Ferrara commentators identified proto-Reformationist elements of their religious doctrine. For Renaissance readers these collective approaches mirror and illuminate Petrarch’s texts in myriad ways.