Italia Mia Analysis

You might have guessed by the name of this form that we're witnessing the very beginning of this special type of poetry in "Italia mia" and the other canzoni in this collection. Petrarch is not rea...

The speaker of this poem is impassioned, impatient, and desperate to get this poem read by any nobleman who will listen. His love for Italy spurs him on and he appears to be fearless in his tone. W...

It's believed that "Italia mia" was composed around 1344 or 1345 in Parma, Italy, and we can see from line 6 that the speaker of the poem is sitting, "sad and grieving," near the Po River. Okay—w...

We know it's terribly impractical, but we can only talk about sound in reference to the original language of the poem (i.e., Italian), since the aural tricks don't really work out in English. While...

When it's not simply referred to by its number, editors grab the first two words as its title. Why? This has partly to do with the reality of manuscript production in the middle ages: you wouldn't...

When Petrarch isn't writing love poems to or about his beloved Laura, he's focused on Italy. Sometimes, he mixes it up and writes about the two of them at one time. One thing is for certain: if you...

Petrarch relies on some knowledge of the social and political situation in Italy at this time—and maybe some basic understanding of geography. He also makes references to the distant past (Marius...

Bands of foreign mercenaries, like the ones Petrarch complains of in Canzone 128, were often led by Italian noblemen. (Source.) Petrarch is most famous for his love poems concerning his beloved Lau...

Nope, there's absolutely no sex in this one. We do have Marius drinking up rivers of blood, however—gross, and not sexy in the slightest.

Mars (13): the Roman god of warFortune , or Fortuna (17): the Roman goddess of, well, fortune "the perilous pass" (102): This is the difficult journey of the soul after death toward the judgme...