Petrarch.
Beautiful Letters| N° d'inventaire | 19423 |
| Format | 16 x 22 |
| Détails | 264 p., paperback with flaps. |
| Publication | Paris, 2015 |
| Etat | Nine |
| ISBN | 9782251445434 |
This general presentation of Petrarch aims to give a simple and coherent picture of his life and works, but it also aims to put an end to an old antinomy between the greatest intellectual of his time, "father of European humanism," and the poet focused exclusively on his love experience. Petrarch laid the foundations of a "sense of time" destined to revolutionize the whole European lyrical experience; he fought long and hard against scholastic philosophy, imposing the cult of Plato in place of that of Aristotle and substituting for Saint Thomas the model of Saint Augustine; he reaffirmed the primacy of ethics and developed a notion of philosophy as a "way of life;" he conceived an idea of the individual as witness to his own history, and of his right to happiness which in no way coincides with the development of science and is not guaranteed by political power. His knowledge of the ancient world and his philological activity do not define an autonomous field of scholarship, but are part of a "civilizing" work that Europe demanded and for which it was ripe: he was the only one to understand it and therefore to be able to respond to the profound tensions of his time.
This general presentation of Petrarch aims to give a simple and coherent picture of his life and works, but it also aims to put an end to an old antinomy between the greatest intellectual of his time, "father of European humanism," and the poet focused exclusively on his love experience. Petrarch laid the foundations of a "sense of time" destined to revolutionize the whole European lyrical experience; he fought long and hard against scholastic philosophy, imposing the cult of Plato in place of that of Aristotle and substituting for Saint Thomas the model of Saint Augustine; he reaffirmed the primacy of ethics and developed a notion of philosophy as a "way of life;" he conceived an idea of the individual as witness to his own history, and of his right to happiness which in no way coincides with the development of science and is not guaranteed by political power. His knowledge of the ancient world and his philological activity do not define an autonomous field of scholarship, but are part of a "civilizing" work that Europe demanded and for which it was ripe: he was the only one to understand it and therefore to be able to respond to the profound tensions of his time.