Project data

Funding entiy: Italian Ministry of University and Research

Call: PRIN 2017

Coordinator: UNIVERSITA’ DEGLI STUDI DI SIENA

UNISI Principal Investigator: Natascia Tonelli

Department: Philology and literary criticism

Start date: 20 January 2020 – End date: 20 July 2023

 

Description

This project aims at a census of Petrarch’s friends and correspondents by way of an innovative work tool, the purpose of which is the reconstruction of Petrarch’s intellectual network in the context of the European Trecento. Petrarch’s literary, scholarly and diplomatic relations provide a unique insight into a culture and society in transition from the civilization of the Middle Ages to that of Renaissance Humanism. Of this transition Petrarch was the initiator, both as a prominent Latin writer and a celebrated model for vernacular poetry. His outstanding epistolary prose (Latin) and verse (Latin and vernacular) engage with over 200 correspondents characterized by wide geographical distribution and social variety. In collecting the relevant documentary, historical, philological, codicological, paleographical and archival evidence into a database, the project builds upon previous achievements while overcoming their limitations (excessive pulverization and the overconfident treatment, typical of positivist erudition, of Petrarch’s texts as plain documentary sources). The interaction of multiple competences (historical, IT, geographical)and the diversified interrogation modalities of the collected data will produce a map of intellectual exchanges across fourteenth-century Europe.

 

This project has received funding from Ministry of University and Research (MUR) – PRIN 2017