Petrarch's Canzoniere

The poetry of Petrarch, including the love poems to Laura, brought to the 21st Century ina new, direct and luminous verse translation.

670 years ago Francesco Petrarch settled down to write of his love for young Laura, spied by him on an April day and stolen by the plague exactly a year later. His work is one of civilization's most immaculate achievements, opening out into spirituality and nature and refining the sonnet form. Following his acclaimed translation of Dante's Inferno, which 'immediately joins ranks with the very best available in English' (Richard Lansing), Peter Thornton brings the poetry of Petrarch to the 21st Century in direct and luminous verse. Complete with introduction and explanatory notes.

About the Authors

The Italian poet Petrarch is one of the supreme love poets of world literature. Born in Italy in 1304, he moved with his family to Provence. On April 6, 1327, in a church in Avignon, Petrarch was smitten by the sight of a young woman named Laura. She did not return his love, but the love stayed with Petrarch even after Laura's early death. Love became a spiritual ideal, redolent in the natural world. Laura inspired the 366 poems that make up his Canzoniere, or Rerum vulgarum fragmenta, translated here as Scattered Rhymes. Petrarch lived till 1374, and was writing and revising his sonnets into his last years.

Peter Thornton grew up in New York City and attended a Jesuit prep school in Manhattan where the curriculum was still based on Latin and Greek. After graduating from Boston College, he originally set out to be an academic. He took a Ph.D. in English literature at Stanford and taught for several years at Bradley University in Illinois. Then, like his father and his three brothers, he decided to become a lawyer and spent the rest of his career happily practising law in Chicago, where he was recognised as a leading practitioner. The intellectual rigor of the law, however, did not satisfy his hunger for poetry and he spent decades translating Dante and Petrarch into English verse. Peter's translation of Dante's Inferno was acclaimed by Richard Lansing as a work that 'immediately joins ranks with the very best available in English.'