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The Evolution of the Canzoniere of Petrarch

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Ernest H. Wilkins*
Affiliation:
Harvard University

Extract

The Canzoniere of Petrarch contains poems written at various times through the long years of the poet's life. It is not a collection made toward the end of his life in a single editorial effort, nor is it a mere gradual accumulation of poems: it is a selective and ordered collection, the fashioning of which, begun in Petrarch's youth, continued to the day of his death. In the present study I am trying to trace the whole course of the evolution of the collection. Much work has been done hitherto, by many scholars, with reference to particular stages or phases of that evolution; but the present study is, I believe, the first to undertake to reconstruct the entire process. Some of the material herein contained is derived from earlier studies, and some of it is new.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1948

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References

1 Photographic reproductions: 77 manoscritto vaticano latino 3196 autograft) di Francesco Petrarca riprodotto … α cura délia Biblioteca Vaiicana (Rome, 1895), and R. Accademia d'Italia, II codice vaticano lot. 3196 autograft del Petrarca, ed. M. Porena (Rome, 1941). Diplomatic reproductions by C. Appel, in his Zur Entwickelung italienischer Dich-lungen Petrarcas (Halle, 1891), and by M. Pelaez, in “Descrizioni e trascrizioni”, in Bullet-tino dell' Archirio paleografico italiano, ii (1910), 163–216. This MS will hereafter be referred to simply as 3196. It consists of a collection of large sheets, each folded once, thus making two leaves, or four pages. The leaves were numbered long ago, probably in the late 16th century. The two leaves of each sheet could originally be folded in either order, and the folds have worn through. The present relative order of the two leaves of a given sheet is therefore not necessarily their original relative order. The order in which the several sheets stood when the leaves were numbered and the consequent numeration have no modern significance. Ff. 5 and 6 are half-sheets, originally separate: f. 6 is of a different format from the others. Most of the sheets were used for lyric poems; but two were used for portions of the Triumphs, and two were used in part for portions of a letter, Ep. jam. xvi 6.

2 The words conserva, registre and Reinschrift have been used by various scholars to designate what I am calling a “reference collection.”

3 Photographic reproduction: L'originale del Canzoniere di Francesco Petrarca, Codice Vaticano Latino 3195, riprodotto in fototipia a cura délia Biblioteca Vaticana, ed. M. Vat-tasso (Milan, 1905). Diplomatic reproduction: Prancisci Pelrarche laweati poete Rerum vulgarium fragmenta, ed. E. Modigliani (Rome, 1904). This MS will hereafter be referred to simply as 3195.

4 Petrarch, Le rime, ed. G. Mestica (Florence, 1896). I am not giving page references for such notations, whether quoted or merely referred to. They may be controlled either by use of Mestica's edition, under the poems concerned, or—in most cases—by use of the chronological list of dated notations in Appel, pp. 182–92.

5 Except as indicated below on p. 440.

6 Petrarch, Rime disperse, ed. A. Solerti (Florence, 1909).

7 The revisions made in 3196 are reported by Appel and Pelaez. A few revisions made in the preparation either of the fourth form or of one of the earlier forms of the Canzoniere are noted by the late—and deeply lamented—Arnaldo Foresti, in “H primo nucleo del Canzoniere”, in Convivium, iv (1932), 334. Revisions made in the passage from the fourth form to the final form are studied in three remarkable articles by Foresti: “Per il testo della prima edizione del Canzoniere del Petrarca”, “Per il testo della prima edizione del ‘Canzoniere’ del Petrarca—nota seconda” and “Per il testo della seconda edizione del ‘Canzoniere’ del Petrarca”, in La Bibliofilia, xxix (1927), 157–78, χχχii (1930), 257–85 and xxxiii (1931), 433–58. Revisions made in 3195 itself are recorded by Modigliani in the edition cited in n. 3, and are studied by Foresti in the three articles just referred to.

8 Speculum, vii (1932), 169–80.

9 Foresti, “Il primo nucleo”, pp. 323-29, agrees with me that the writing of S. 7–8 preceded that of ff. 9–10. N. Quarta, Di alcuni nuovi stuii suit' ordinamento del Can-zoniere petrarchesco (Naples, 1938), pp. 35–9, defends the opinion previously expressed by him in his Studi sul testo dette rime del Petrarca (Naples, 1902), pp. 55–64, that the writing of ff. 9–10 preceded that of ff. 7–8. My own opinion remains unchanged; but I leave to any who may be interested the balancing of his arguments on this point against mine. If the verdict should be ultimately in his favor, my present statement of the order of the sonnets should be revised accordingly; and the transcription of ff. 7–8 instead of being assigned to a period prior to November 4, 1336, should be assigned to a period between February 13 and November 16, 1337. Such changes would not modify this present study at any other point.

10 A notation above 58 reads: Ad dominum Agapitum cum quibusdam munusculis, que ille non potuit induct ut acciperet. Another notation on the margin reads: die natali mane, 1338. The word quoted as mane may be read either as mane or as marie. It was read as mane by Appel and by Mestica, but G. Salvo Cozzo (in “Le ‘rime sparse’…” in Giornale slorico delta letteratura italiana, xxx [1897], 406) read it as marie, and Pelaez, while in doubt, tends to favor the reading marie. If the word is mane the date is December 25, 1337 (Petrarch began his years a nativitale); if it is marie the date is September 8, 1338. Four considerations—none of them, to be sure, conclusive—point to mane rather than marie: (1) the fact that f. 16r, which was apparently written in the same period of activity as f. 16v, once bore upon its upper margin the notation 1337, Novembr. 16 processi hic scribendo; (2) the fact that the word mane occurs in several of Petrarch's date notations; (3) the fact that in the Canzoniere 58 precedes 62, which is presumably of April 6, 1338; and (4) the fact of the gifts—if Christmas was for Petrarch a special occasion for the giving of gifts.

11 The question of the exact time-relation of the transcription of 23 to that of ff. 7–10 is apparently beyond conclusive determination. In my article on this collection, on pp. 175-6, I argued that the transcription of 23 “probably intervened between that of No. 35 and that of No. xxvi.” Foresti, in “Il primo nucleo”, differs, thinking that the transcription of 23 preceded the writing of f. 7. Quarta, Di alcuni nuovi studi, pp. 39–40, attacks my argument, but expresses no opinion of his own—believing, apparently, that any attempt to establish an exact time-relationship for the transcription of 23 is futile. I sought only to establish a probability: Quarta writes as if I had asserted an absolute conclusion. He is in error in reporting me as putting the transcription of 23 between that of Se voi poteste (which is No. 64) and that of No. xxvi.

12 The words ei incep. were thereafter cancelled, presumably as being redundants.

13 No trace of a mark is visible over the a in the reproductions.

14 Nos. 41-3 stand together on f. 8r, and a single notation and a single cancellation serve for all three. The cancellation starts in exactly the same pattern as that used for the other sonnets named above: the continuation of the lines results in a cross cancellation for the page as a whole. In the case of 45 no left-hand cancellation is visible.

15 E. Chiòrboli, in his “I sonetti introduttivi aile ‘Rime sparse,’ ” in Studi pelrarcheschi (Arezzo, 1928), p. 69, characterizes the first line of 34 excellently as a “Cominciamento balioso e gioioso che se anche, si come ben par credibile, fu innanzi ad altro fine e con altra intenzione composto, ottimamente prestavasi a preludiare ai canti dell' amore e della gloria.”

16 See Appel, p. 20 (Appel however reports the erroneous date of 1340), and Foresti, “Per il testo della prima edizione”, pp. 22–3.

17 In “Il primo nucleo.”

18 H. Cochin, la Chronologie du Canzoniere de Pétrarque (Paris, 1898), p. 47.

19 It is interesting to note that this list includes both of the two poems, 23 and 268, which bear in 3196 the notations quoted at the beginning of the present section of this study. In spite of Petrarch's vi um est et hanc in ordine transcribe™ (for 23), neither 23 nor 268 was transcribed in ordine until November, 1356.

20 The facts as to the division in Chigi L. V. 176 will be stated below, on p. 427; the facts that show that when the writing of 3195 was begun Petrarch regarded Part π as beginning with 264 will be stated below, on pp. 431-4; the facts as to the division in the MSS that represent the antepenultimate and penultimate forms will be stated below, on pp. 441 and 444. The general question of the division will be discussed in the last section of this study.

21 See my article, “A Chronological Conspectus of the Writings of Petrarch”, Romanic Review, xxxix (1948), 90. Chiòrboli, op. cit., p. 72, seems to me to be completely right in his suggestion that Nos. 1 and 264 are del medesimo tempo.

22 Appel, p. 129.

23 This fact was pointed out by Quarta, Studi sul testo, pp. 81-2.

24 Petrarch, Lefamiliari, ed. V. Rossi (Florence, 1937), in, 215.

25 I owe this argument to Quarta, Di alcuni nuovi studi, p. 19. This conclusion represents a correction of my earlier opinion as to the date of the Pre-Chigi form, as expressed on p. 268 of the article referred to in the next note.

26 Modem Philology, xxiii (1926), 257–72. (Misprints occur in that article as follows: p. 258, for 69 read 79; p. 262, next to last line of the text, for “three” read “two”; p. 263, first col., delete “Fifth”; p. 268, first line, for 255 read 263; second line, for 63 read 66; p. 272, near end, for 63 read 66. Nos. 172, 173 and 171 on pp. 259 and 260 refer to the order of the Chigi MS. The corresponding numbers for V.L. 3195 are respectively 176, 177 and 178.)

27 Ruth S. Phelps, The Earlier and Later Forms of Petrarch's Canzoniere (Chicago, 1925).

28 Porena, in his “L'ordinamento del Canzoniere petrarchesco e le due grandi canzoni politiche”, in R. Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei, Classe di Scienze Morali, Storiche e Filologiche, Rendiconti, Ser. vi, Vol. xi (1935), pp. 129–33, defends vigorously and effectively the basically chronological character of the arrangement of the Canzoniere. Pages 231-3, in particular, are excellent. His argument would have been stronger still if it had been based upon the Pre-Chigi form or the Chigi form or the Johannine form. I differ from his general conclusion only in that whereas he implies that Petrarch wished his readers to infer that the order was exactly chronological, my own conclusion, as indicated in the text, is that Petrarch was content that his readers should have a general impression of chronological succession—an impression which in the Pre-Chigi form, despite a few actual dislocations, there was nothing to impair.

29 The order of the 142 poems in respect to form is as follows (numerals represent sonnets, and the letters b, c, m and 5 represent respectively the words ballata, canzone, madrigale and sestina) : 10, b, 2, b, 7, s, c, 4, two canzoni, s, 6, c, 12, c, 1, m, c, m, b, 3, b, 3, b, 2, s, 3, four canzoni, 6, s, 24, c, m, 12, c, 1, m, 3, five canzoni, 5, c, 6, s. See Miss Phelps, op. cit., Chapter iii.

30 The order of the 142 poems in respect to content is as follows (unstarred numerals in roman type represent love poems, italicized numerals represent poems of friendship, single-starred numerals represent political poems, and double-starred numerals represent poems of religion): V oi ch' ascoltate, 5, 2, 1, 1, 13, 3, 2∗, 9, 3, 12, 1, 4, 1, 3, 1∗∗, 13, 1, 3, 2∗∗, 9, 2, 5, 2, 3, 2, 3, 1, 3, 3, 4, Una donna piu bella, 1, 1, 1∗, 7, 3∗, 1, 2, A la dolce ombra. See Miss Phelps, Chapter iv.

31 In “Il primo nucleo.” See especially p. 322.

32 My present opinion as to the date of the Chigi form is stated below, on p. 429.

33 Di alcuni nuovi studi, pp. 8–9.

34 Naples, 1937.

35 Quarta, Di alcuni nuovi studi, p. 14, shows, on the basis of a special reexamination of the MS, that this date is 1359 rather than 1360.

36 I now adopt Pelaez's reading 8 in place of Appel's 18.

37 See Quarta, Di alcuni nuovi studi, pp. 16–18. Appel says that in the case of the first dated notation he finds “keinen Unterschied in der Tinte vom Text”; and that the second notation appears to be contemporary not with the original transcription of 159 but with a somewhat later entry of variants.

38 This particular MS was not prepared or owned by Petrarch: it is a derivative, based directly or indirectly on Petrarch's own and now lost MS of this form.

39 Mestica, ed. cit. in n. 4, pp. 268 and 263.

40 There are minor variations in the form of this notation, but I do not believe them to be significant.

41 See Foresti, “Per il testo … nota seconda”, pp. 286–7. Before Boccaccio visited Petrarch in the Autumn of 1362 he (Boccaccio) had burned lyrics of his own as a result of reading those of Petrarch, as we are told in Ep. sen. v 2. Foresti is clearly right in inferring that the form in which Boccaccio read the lyrics was the Chigi form. Foresti asserts that the Chigi form began to circulate in 1360: he may be right; but he does not give his evidence. The statement here made as to the date of the Chigi form represents a correction of my earlier opinion as expressed in “The Pre-Chigi Form”, pp. 268–9.

42 The seven MSS are Hamilton (Berlin), 495, Palatine (Florence), 184 and 192; Pan-ciatichiano 12; Palatine (Parma), 307, Riccardiano 1101, and Trivulziano 1091. See my article, “Manuscripts Containing the Chigi Form of the Canzoniere of Petrarch”, in Symposium, i (1946–7), No. 3, pp. 1–4.

43 The three MSS are Riccardiano 1100, Riccardiano 1156, and Trivulziano 1058. See the article cited in the preceding note.

44 “The Dates of Transcription of Petrarch's Manuscript V. L. 3195”, in Modem Philology, xxvi (1929), 283-6.

45 Aneddoti della vita di Francesco Petrarca, Brescia, 1928, pp. 430–1; and “Il primo nu-cleo”, 325–6 and 330.

46 On the date of this poem see Foresti, “II sonetto del Petrarca: ‘Mai non vedranno le mie luci asciutte,‘ Convivium, xii (1934), 503-13, and Chiòrboli, ”Questioni petrarchesche,“ Giornale storico, cvi (1935), 217–20. Foresti argues for 1345; Chiòrboli for a later date. Chiòrboli seems to me to have the better of the argument.

47 Page 23.

48 L'originale del Canzoniere, pp. xiv-xv.

49 Op. cit. in n. 28, pp. 139–40. Porena is in error in saying—after quoting from f. lr the notation 1366. Sabato ante lucent decenibris 5—that “La medesima annotazione, con parole identiche e identica collocazione, troviamo al margine superiore della carta 1 verso.”

50 “On the Transcription by Petrarch in V.L. 3195”, Modern Philology, xxiv (1927), 261-8 and 389–404; and “The Dates of Transcription”, cited in n. 44.

51 Our knowledge of this episode is derived from Petrarch's Ep. sen. v 5–6. See F. A. Wulff, “Trois sonnets de Pétrarque selon le MS. sur papier, Vat. 3196”, Frân Filologiska Foreningen i Lund, Sprâkliga uppsalser (1902), n, 12 and 15, n. 4, and “Préoccupations de Pétrarque, 1359–1369”, Lunds Universitets Årsskrift (N.F.), Afd. i, ii (1907), 11; also Foresti, “Giovanni da Ravenna e il Petrarca”, in his Aneddoti, pp. 425–57. Wulff makes the very reasonable suggestion that Giovanni may have been moved in part by distaste for working on Italian poems.

52 See “The Dates of Transcription”, cited in n. 44, p. 284. 53 See “The Dates of Transcription”, 284–6 and 291–4.

54 Immediately thereafter, or at a later time, the letter b was placed in the margin beside 194 and the letter a beside 195: see Quarta, Sill ordinamento, p. 21. Dr. Augusto Cam-pana of the Vatican Library, who, with Professor Giuseppe Billanovich, most kindly examined 3195 for me in this respect, writes, in a memorandum dated Aug. 16, 1947: “Che questi minuscoli avanzi siano di mano del Petrarca è possibile, ma mi pare ardito asserirlo; apparentemente potrebbero dirsi anche del s. xv avanzato.”

55 See “The Dates of Transcription”, loc. cit. in n. 53.

56 From this point on, in order to obviate frequent repetition of the words “Part i” and “Part n”, it will be assumed that the reader will realize that all poems having numbers in the range 1-263 are poems of Part i, and that all poems having numbers in the range 264-366 are poems of Part n.

57 Presumably finis.

58 The reader is reminded that numerals designate poems according to their actual positions in 3195. For Petrarch's revised plan as to the arrangement of 337-65 see below, p. 449.

59 In the lower left corner of f. 66v, the page that ends with 338, Petrarch at some time or other entered a Roman numeral, now partly obliterated, which has been variously read and interpreted. Mestica (ed. cit. in n. 5, p. 493) reads it as “CCCI, con la prima C quasi pienamente tagliata dalla raffilatura.” Modigliani (ed. cit. in n. 3, ad. loc.) reads it as CC.L, and says: “Si deve escludere che il numero sia ‘CCCI con la prima C quasi pienamente tagliata dalla raffilatura’ perché tra 1'orlo del margine e la prima délie due C è uno spazio più che sufficiente per un' altra C, di cui, invece, non si vede traccia; quanto all' ultima let-tera, essa è indubbiamente una L.” Vattasso (L' originale del Canzoniere, n. 5 on pp. χ and xi) reads it as CCI or CCL. Quarta (Sull' ordinamenlo, p. 11) reverts to the reading CCCI.

60 See below, p. 449. No. 336 is the last of the poems whose position does not change. In this Table and in the rest of this study numerals representing the three canzoni that occur among the ultime rime are italicized.

61 I am using the term Main Malatesta form to designate the form contained in the MS sent to Pandolfo on January 4, 1373, prior to its completion by the sending of the supplements to be discussed in Section xiii of this study.

62 Petrarch, Epistolae de rebus familiaribus et mriae, ed. G. Fracassetti (Florence, 1863), iii, 322–3.

63 Petrarch, Libri impressi (Venice, 1501), Vol. ii, f. 10 ii, v. In this edition (the first edition of the Epistolae seniles) this letter appears as Ep. sen. xiii 11.

64 Foresti, “Per il testo délia seconda edizione”, pp. 433–6 and 443–5; Quarta, Sull' or-dinamento, pp. 2–13.

65 This inversion was quite certainly deliberate (and was made, very probably, for the reason—suggested by Quarta, Sull' ordinamento, p. 6—that the phrasing of the opening line of 365, V ago augelletto, che cantando mi, was too much like the phrasing of the opening line of 366, Vergine bella, che di sol vestita). The inversion persists in Petrarch's final desire as to the rearrangement of these poems, as will appear below.

66 Foresti, “Per il testo della seconda edizione”, pp. 446–7; Quarta, Sull' ordinamento' pp. 6–7.

67 See above, p. 436.

68 See my forthcoming article “On the Manuscripts of the Canzoniere of Petrarch”, in Speculum, xxiii (1948). The four MSS that agree perfectly with the Laurentian MS in the five respects indicated are Rice. 1097, 1124 and 1138 and the American MS. 16; the two that agree except for their lack of Nos. 1–3 are Rice. 1102 and V. L. 4783; and the six that have the five distinctive features with a single modification are Rice. 1096, 1127 and 1143, V.L. 3198, Urbin. 681 and the American MS. 17.

69 Foresti, “Per il testo delia seconda edizione”, pp. 440–58; Quarta, Sull' ordinamento, pp. 8 ff.

70 Quarta, Sull' ordinamento, p. 8, suggests that the second of the two erasures beside 337 in 3195 may result from an entry 7 replacing the earlier presumable entry 11.

71 Foresti, loc. cil. in n. 69.

72 See my article “On the Manuscripts of the Canzoniere.”

73 See the article cited in the preceding note.

74 Sull' ordinamento, pp. 9-13.

75 See my article “On the Manuscripts of the Canzoniere.” It is because of the possibility that these four poems were released before the rest of the supplement that I am treating C3 and D8 as separate groups, rather than as constituting a single group.

76 Cf. Vattasso, V originale del Canzoniere, p. xv: “… le cinque pagine in fine della prima parte del Canzoniere, lasciato in bianco dall' autore, assai probabilmente col proposito di riportarvi altre poésie quando le avesse avute in pronto.”

77 Petrarch, Le rime, ed. G. Salvo Cozzo (Florence, 1904), p. xi.

It may be of interest to review the successive arrangements of the ultime rime. The pre-Malatesta form contained seven of these poems, 337-8 and 362-6. In the main Malatesta form five poems were added, and the order became AS, B4, 337-8 and 366. In the Quirini-ano form the order became A5, 337, 362-5, 338, 366. In the Malatesta supplement thirteen poems were added, in the order 355, C3, D8,356, E5. When Petrarch inserted the duernion the order of the group as a whole—still lacking 357—became 337–56, 358–66. Then came the inclusion of 357. The final order, indicated by the arabic numerals, is that just referred to in the text.

78 There are other cases in which there was certainly or probably an actual breach of chronology, which, however, would not be likely to be noticed by the reader. Nos. 194 and 197 were not written before 1367; 221 was probably written before 212; and 324 was written in 1348—long before 323.

79 See above, pp. 427, 431-4, 437, 441, and 444.

80 Lingering ideas that Petrarch did not intend the Canzoniere to be divided at all, or that if he did mean it to be divided he meant to have Part π begin with 267, are thoroughly refuted by Porena, op. cit. in n. 28, pp. 166-77. One point may be added: 267 stands, in 3195, at the foot of a page, immediately below 266; and no space was left, at the beginning of 267, for anything more than an ordinary initial.

81 Ed. cit. in n. 4, p. vii.

82 It was probably written in 1347: see n. 21. 83 See Miss Phelps, op. cit. in n. 29, pp. 189–200.

84 H. Hauvette, les Poésies lyriques de Pétrarque (Paris, 1931), pp. 102–4.

85 N. Sapegno, Il Trecento, 2d ed. (Milan, 1942), p. 241. 86 Loc. cit. The quotations are from pp. 171–3.

87 See above, p. 421.

88 No attempt is made in this table to show the order in which the poems stood in the several forms.