Through Human Love to God: Essays on Dante and PetrarchTroubador Publishing Ltd, 2007 - 137 pages Dante and Petrarch are two of the world's greatest love poets who convey emotional, intellectual and religious life through the story of human love. This book focuses on the attitudes of these two poets to sexual desire and throws light on to their human love and the value given to this love in the context of their Christian lives. Despite the contrasts between them, Dante and Petrarch are often compared, for they write in a common literary, classical and Christian tradition. It is generally considered that Dante describes his human love experience as positive and Petrarch views it as a negative emotion. It is the general argument of this study that Dante and Petrarch, as well as leaving their own mark on the tradition of love poetry, have insights into religion, which can be characzterized by examining their attitudes to human love. The discussion here is that of their faith, which is coloured by and explored through human love. |
Contents
Acedia as Dantes sin in the Commedia | 19 |
Sexual desire and the Paradiso | 35 |
Sexual sin and Petrarchs love for Laura | 61 |
The motivating power of human love | 93 |
Common terms and phrases
Abelard acedia action activity Ages appetite argument Augustine Beatrice beauty body Book called Cambridge canzone Canzoniere Carozza and Shey Chapter character charity Christian collection comes Commedia Confessions conversion Convivio courtly Dante Dante’s death describes direction divine effect emotions example experience fact feelings follow Foster Franciscus gives grace Heaven Heloise human love important influence Italy journey judged kind knowledge Latin Letters literature lives London love for Laura lover lust meaning Medieval Middle mind moral move movement nature never notes object Oxford Paradiso passion Petrarch Petrarch’s Secretum philosophy Plato poem poet poet’s poetry position Purgatorio rational reason reference relation relationship religious remain says sense sexual desire sins soul speaks spiritual Stoic story Studies Summa things thought tradition trans translation turn understanding University Press Venus Virgin virtue Vita writes York