Petrarch, an Italian scholar and poet from the 14th century known as the Father of Humanism, is the poet who first popularized the sonnet, a 14-line style of poetry. He is best known for his collection of sonnets dedicated to his muse, Laura, a woman he fell in love with and idealized throughout his life. Petrarchan sonnets are characterized by iambic pentameter and an ABBAABBA rhyme scheme. His sonnets, originally composed in Italian, focus on themes of passion, longing, and loss. Petrarch's Canzoniere (“Songbook”) consists of 366 poems that reveal his inner turmoil and spiritual journey, and the vast majority of these poems are about Laura and his unrequited love for her. Petrarch’s writing style influenced many poets of the Renaissance, emphasizing emotional expression and the use of rhyme, meter, and imagery. Petrarch’s sonnets are examples of postmodern literature because of his use of rhetorical stance, fragmentation, and intertextuality.
Petrarch’s used rhetorical stance through his rhetorical questions in his poems like "Canzoniere No. 332. ‘Mia benigna fortuna e ’l viver lieto,’" and "Qual Donna Attende A Gloriosa Fama". These rhetorical questions express a theme of metafiction, in which the narrator—Petrarch—addresses his audience as if he is speaking to someone that can speak back. This shows that he confidently acknowledges that he is writing a work of fiction in the work itself, which is the defining characteristic of metafiction.
Petrarch also uses fragmentation, in the way that almost all 366 of his poems in his Canzoniere address Laura, yet they are not a single story being told over several works—they are fragmented and timeless; each is written simply as his thoughts in a moment, completely separate from the others, despite their similar Petrarchan structure. This is clear evidence of Petrarch’s postmodern writing style, because he continuously reflects on the act of writing itself and the emotions that compelled him to do so.
Petrarch uses intertextuality in two of his poems, “Mirror, my enemy, in which you are allowed” and “The gold and pearls and flowers, crimson and white,” when he references Narcissus, the Greek mythological figure who drowned—literally—in his own vanity, to chide himself on his hubris for thinking that Laura must love him back. He refers to Laura as “mirror, my enemy,” describing her as the thing that would drag his to his death, just like Narcissus’ reflection did to Narcissus in the Greek myth.
How is Petrarch’s writing similar to Jonathan Haidt’s “WHY THE PAST 10 YEARS OF AMERICAN LIFE HAVE BEEN UNIQUELY STUPID”?
Both Haidt and Petrarch used the Postmodern elements of sampling and rhetorical stance. While Petrarch used intertextuality to co-opt the message of Narcissus’ myth as his own and to represent the universality of man’s emotions, Haidt used pastiche in his essay by combining information from history, mythology, and famous philosophers with his analysis of a modern issue. They both used rhetorical questions to address their reader, though Haidt’s also served a more persuasive purpose, trying to convince the reader that any counterclaim to his own was absurd, while Petrarch’s was addressing the reader for their sympathy for his situation. Both writers were able to use these same postmodern elements to make completely different arguments with drastically different tones.