The Canzoniere that Petrarch left behind after his death in 1374 can appear manifestly unsocial. This is especially true when considered beside the great range of correspondence verse that littered the poetic landscape in the Italian Middle Ages. The last chapter mentioned the influence of medieval contrasti and tenzoni fittizie, such as those found in the thirteenth-century manuscript Vaticano Latino 3793. One might also call to mind something like Dante's famous tenzone with Forese Donati, and the former's jabs about the latter's impotence; or Dante's circulation of a poem about dreaming of his lady in Love's arms, and the memorable reply from Dante da Maiano that he should wash his testicles in cold water. Beside such examples of poetic thrust and parry, Petrarch—so great a fan of reclusion that he authored an entire treatise on the virtues of the solitary life—seems to stand apart, the author of a volume of lyric about a man chasing the ghost of a girl through the woods solus.

And yet, despite first impressions and Petrarch's best, loneliest intentions, there is much that relates to the collective in his verse. The first line of the proemial sonnet famously posits an audience, addressing readers directly in the second person plural: “You who listen in scattered rhymes” (Voi ch’ ascoltate in rime sparse).