Volto di Medusa: Monumentalizing the self in Petrarch’s Rerum vulgarium fragmenta

Forum Italicum

47(3) 497–521

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DOI: 10.1177/0014585813497334

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Article

‘Volto di Medusa’:Monumentalizing theself in Petrarch’s Rerumvulgarium fragmenta

Aileen A FengUniversity of Arizona, USA

Abstract

Scholarship on Petrarch has generally intepreted the figure of Laura-as-Medusa as a

projection of the poet’s internal conflict between sacred and profane love. Such a reading

takes Medusa as a threat to Petrarch’s agency. Yet Petrarch’s Laura-Medusa is suggestively

figured as only her disembodied head, a weapon ultimately manipulated by Perseus. This

reversal of agency has an impact on Petrarch’s complicated theory of poetic inspiration,

and reaches beyond the relationship between poet and beloved to encompass another

fraught paradigm of power: the relationship between poet and patron. By recalling the

disembodied head of Medusa in the figure of Laura, and recovering the political symbolism

of the appropriation of her petrifying gaze, Petrarch creates a model of poetic agency that

he uses to stage his relationship to patronage in the Latin Africa and a poem addressed to

his Colonna patrons.

Keywords

Medusa, patronage, Petrarch

L’ombra sua sola fa ’l mio cor un ghiaccio, et di bianca paura il viso tinge; ma li occhi

anno vertu di farne un marmo. (Petrarca, 2001: 197, 9–14)1

In 1962, Kenelm Foster published one of the first and most often cited articles on thefigure of Medusa in Petrarch’s Rerum vulgarium fragmenta (RVF), one which con-tinues to influence scholarship on the subject.2 By investigating whether or notPetrarch’s Laura functioned as a Dantean beatrice (conduit to God), or as aMedusa (obstacle toGod), Foster argued for a binary opposition between the figures

Corresponding author:

Aileen A Feng, Department of French and Italian, Modern Languages 549, University of Arizona, PO Box

210067, Tucson, AZ 85721-0067, USA.

Email: [email protected]

of Beatrice and Laura that would have the former guide Dante towards the BeatificVision while the latter’s beauty competed with it and put Petrarch’s soul in danger.For Foster, Laura-as-Medusa represents Petrarch’s moral arrestment, particularlyin the three so-called Medusa poems3 wherein the beloved is a ‘mere image of thelover-obsession, almost without moral overtones’ (Foster, 1962: 52–53). He readsthese three poems as the obstacle that Petrarch finally overcomes in the Hymn toMadonna at the end of the lyric collection (Petrarca, 2001: RVF, 366). In otherwords, Petrarch’s final turn toward the Virgin, his proclamation, ‘Medusa etl’error mio m’an fatto un sasso’ (2001: v. 111), ‘Medusa and my error have mademe a stone’ (1976: 582), signifies his repentance and overcoming of Laura-Medusa,the final obstacle in his salvation. In the end, for Foster, the figure of Laura-Medusarepresents the crux of a penitential theme that primarily characterizes the latter halfof the lyric collection, and that permeates the Secretum and Triumphi.

Over the half-century since the publication of Foster’s article, Italian scholarshiphas witnessed several theoretical approaches to the figure of Medusa withinPetrarch’s poetics, all of which ultimately come back to the same penitentialtheme highlighted in 1962, and almost always in comparison to Dante’s belovedBeatrice. From theological and Dantean-inspired readings of the letter versus thespirit, to the psychosexual approach in Freudian studies, and feminist critiques of thesilent, yet menacing, beloved, scholars have tended to emphasize a singular episodeinvolving the Gorgon – her ability to turn men into stone, and deprive them of life,like the fallen warriors Perseus encounters in her cave.4 The fixation on Medusa’sgaze, and emphasis on its arresting qualities has, in part, been due to our takingPetrarch’s fiction at face value: when in Rerum vulgarium fragmenta 129 Petrarchrefers to himself as a ‘pietra morta in pietra viva’ (v. 51), he creates a pun on his name(Petra-, rock), applying the Dantean maxim ‘nomine sunt consequentia rerum’ (Vitanova XIII, 4) to create a (super)natural relationship between himself and Laura-Medusa.5 We have generally linked the pun to its logical counterpart in the figure ofLaura-Medusa, since the notion that Petrarch’s name identifies him as rock legitim-izes his relationship to the beloved by presenting her as uniquely destined to be hisbeloved.6 Yet this brings up a host of issues that are not easily resolved. If Petrarch’sname is already associated with rock, then it would seem that Laura-Medusa’s pet-rifying powers would be at best redundant. What is his fear of being turned intostone when he was always already a rock? In order to assess the paradigm of powerbetween Petrarch and Laura-Medusa, we must go to Petrarch’s source for theMedusa myth, Ovid’s Metamorphoses, and consider closely how Petrarch adoptsand deviates from it.

Critics have long privileged the encounter between Perseus and Medusa as theprimary source of Petrarch’s figure of Laura-Medusa, overlooking details in hispoems that would indicate otherwise. When, in poem 197, cited in the epigraph ofthis article, Petrarch claims that Laura’s eyes ‘anno vertu di farne un marmo’ (v. 14),‘have the power to turn it to marble’ (1976: 342), he describes a power that is onlyassociated with Medusa after the slaying: while alive, Medusa has the power to turnmen into stone, but it is Medusa’s disembodied head, in the hands of Perseus, that

498 Forum Italicum 47(3)

has the ability to turn men into marble. The material difference between stone andmarble is perhaps less important than the way the semantic difference hints at achange inMedusa’s power when it is appropriated by Perseus. That is, if Medusa-as-Medusa turns men to stone, and later Medusa-as-wielded-by-Perseus turns men tomarble, then the difference between stone and marble signals an alteration inMedusa’s power itself by the fact of its appropriation. The implications thus leadus to an examination of Medusa’s agency, intact during life, and appropriated byPerseus in death. A closer look at Petrarch’s Medusa poems reveals a repetition ofthe detail concerning the beloved’s gaze and marble and Petrarch’s understanding ofthe difference appropriation makes in Ovid’s Medusa. Readers of Petrarch vis-a-visOvid rarely distinguish between the scenes of Medusa’s power in the myth: theencounter between Perseus and Medusa in her cave, the Perseus and Atlas episode,or the battle in Cepheus’s palace. They have all traditionally been interpreted asdifferent means towards the same end: petrification and death.While acknowledgingthat Petrarch knew his Ovidian subtext well, scholarship has not paid close enoughattention to the ways in which he engages with the differences between the Medusamyths that are recounted over the course of the Metamorphoses. In other words,where both Ovid and Petrarch see a multifaceted Medusa, we, as modern scholars,have seen a one-dimensional character: a morally damning figure, the idol in Foster’s‘cult of Laura-laurel’ that Petrarch ultimately rejects for a Christian salvation.

The distinction between Medusa’s agency in turning men to stone and Perseus’sagency in using her head to turnmen intomarble is most explicit in the description ofPerseus’s political exploits in Cepheus’s palace. There, Medusa’s disembodied headis used as a weapon to immortalize Perseus’s opponents as cowards in the form ofmarble statues. By turning his opponents into statues, Perseus creates dual-purposemonuments: they are a warning to others who might challenge him (from the Latinmoneo, monere), and they are reminders of Perseus’s victories, visual markers of hisself-aggrandizement. This second point plays an important role in Petrarch’s poetics,not only in theRerum vulgarium fragmenta, but also in the Latin Familiares. As shallbe explored in this article, attributing to Laura-Medusa the power tomonumentalizethe poet in marble denies the beloved agency and power over the poet-lover since shebecomes, like Medusa, a tool in the hands of the poet. As Perseus before him,Petrarch defeats Laura-Medusa and appropriates her agency in a move towardshis own self-aggrandizement. In this light, the Medusa poems help elucidatePetrarch’s complicated theory of poetic inspiration, something that reachesbeyond the relationship between poet and beloved (source of poetic inspiration inthe lyric collection) to encompass another fraught paradigm of power: the hierarchybetween poet and patron (another source of poetic inspiration). That is, by recallingthe disembodied head of Medusa in the figure of his own beloved, Petrarch is able tostage his relationship to patronage by recovering the political use of Medusa in thePerseus myth, and recalling the issue of agency inherent in the myth. ThoughPetrarch often presents himself as subservient to the beloved (who has the powerto deny him love, thereby ensuring his salvation), and the patron (who supports thepoet financially), through the Medusa myth he aggrandizes himself by making them

Feng 499

both reliant upon him for their immortality in verse. This paradigm shift – from thepoet serving the beloved and patron, to controlling them –will first be analyzed in theMedusa poems within the context of the Ovidian subtext and Petrarch’s musings onmarble in the Familiares. I will then examine how Petrarch appropriates this modelto political patronage in the Latin epicAfrica, the vernacular poems addressed to theColonna patrons, and, finally, theCollatio laureationis. Through the working-out ofhis relationship with the figure of the beloved-as-Medusa, Petrarch shows his manyfaces: the political prosatore latino, the apolitical love-sick poet, and the independent‘agent’ (from the Latin agere). As we shall see, Petrarch’s alignment with thefigure of Perseus after the slaying will result in the auto-construction of Petrarchas a semi-autonomous agent indebted to no one but posterity.

Medusa’s gaze(s)

Scholars have long recognized that the Petrarchan persona that emerges from theRerum vulgarium fragmenta is one that speaks with a distinctly different tone than theone encountered in the Latin works. The authoritative ego of the Latin epistles andepic is virtually forgotten in the naıve, wounded, fragile, and admittedly fragmentedio of the lyric.7 Much like Dante’s Beatrice in the Vita nova, Laura is presentedthroughout the poetic collection as haughty and cruel. Yet her cruelty takes onmany forms depending on her association with mythological figures. As Daphne,her cruelty is in her refusal to return love – a refusal forwhich shepays dearlywhen sheis metamorphosed into a tree.8 As the Medusa, she has the power to turn men intostonewith her gaze. Through her associationwith the gorgon, Laura appears towieldpower, and enact it, over the poet-lover: she has power over his fate. When the twomyths are presented together, as inRVF 197, ‘L’aura celeste che ‘n quel verde lauro,’the power of Laura’s gaze becomes more powerful in its comparison to the submis-siveness of Daphne:9

L’aura celeste che ’n quel verde lauro

spira, ov’Amor ferı nel fianco Apollo,

et a me pose un dolce giogo al collo,

tal che mia liberta tardi restauro,

po quello in me che nel gran vecchio mauro

Medusa quando in selce transformollo;

ne posso dal bel nodo omai dar crollo,

la ’ve il sol perde, non pur l’ambra, o l’auro. (1–8)

(The heavenly breeze that breathes in that green laurel, where Love smote Apollo in the

side and on my neck placed a sweet yoke so that I restore my liberty only late,/has the

power over me that Medusa had over the old Moorish giant, when she turned him into

flint; nor can I shake loose that lovely know by which the sun is surpassed, not to say

amber or gold.) (1976: 342)


The series of Ovidian self-identifications in the quatrains presents a conflictingportrait of the relationship between Petrarch and Laura. The initial identificationwith Apollo in the first quatrain recalls the theme of unrequited love that has come todefine the poetic collection as a whole. The appropriation of the Daphne–Apollomyth is directly linked to the poetic process through the double-reference to thelaurel: the ‘verde lauro’ (‘green laurel’; 1) through which the breeze/beloved blows,and the ‘dolce giogo al collo’ (‘sweet yoke on my neck’; 3), the laurel crown figuredaround his neck. In this case, the power of the beloved is analogous to a constantwind of inspiration, one that is uncontrollable and that incessantly touches the poet.In both readings – her analogy to bothDaphne, whometamorphoses into a tree, andalso the wind – the beloved is deprived of life. Although the poet suffers from unre-quited love, as does his Apollonian counterpart, he is not figured as being harmed;rather, he is deified.

The transition to the second quatrain, however, recalls a second Ovidian mythwhich seemingly reverses the consequences that emerge from the analogy to theApollo–Daphne myth: as Medusa, Laura is given the power to petrify Petrarchand deprive him of life, as she did to Atlas. The reference to the gorgon Medusaportrays Laura in a much different light to the veiled association with Daphne.Petrarch aligns himself with Atlas, the strongest mortal turned to stone byMedusa in Book IV of the Metamorphoses:10

viribus inferior (quis enim par esset Atlantis viribus?) ‘at, quoniam parvi tibi gratia

nostra est, accipe munus!’ ait laevaque a parte Medusae ipse retro versus squalentia

protulit ora. quantus erat, mons factus Atlas: nam barba comaeque in silvas abeunt,

iuga sunt umeriquemanusque, quod caput ante fuit, summo est inmonte cacumen, ossa

lapis fiunt. (4.653–660)

(At length, finding himself unequal in strength—for who would be a match in strength

for Atlas? —he [Perseus] said: ‘Well, since so small a favor you will not grant to me, let

me give you a boon’; and, himself turning his back, he held out from his left hand the

ghastly Medusa-head. Straightaway Atlas became a mountain huge as the giant had

been; his beard and hair were changed to trees, his shoulders and arms to spreading

ridges; what had been his headwas now themountain’s top, and his bones were changed

to stones.) (Ovid, 1916: 225)

Petrarch apparently models his relationship with his beloved on that betweenAtlas and Medusa: both Atlas and Petrarch are mortals subject to the supernaturalpowers of mythic women. Thus, in recalling this second myth, Petrarch bestowsupon Laura the ability to control his fate and to transform him into somethingunrecognizable. Yet the parallel is not quite as clear as it first appears. TheOvidian episode Petrarch recalls in the second quatrain comes after Perseus hasslain Medusa, when the gorgon has lost her own agency. In fact, Atlas is the firstman to be turned to stone by the sight of the disembodied head ofMedusa in Book 4of Ovid’s Metamorphoses, when he refuses to offer Perseus hospitality in his

Feng 501

kingdom. In this episode, Medusa’s head is used as a weapon by her slayer, whosephysical strength is no match for Atlas, a detail that significantly alters our under-standing of Petrarch’s appropriation of this Ovidian scene. At first, it would appearthat Petrarch is aligning himself with Atlas, the one who is turned to stone byMedusa. But when we recall that it is not Medusa herself who petrifies Atlas, butrather Perseus bearing Medusa’s head, then it would seem that the compliment isbackhanded. For if Laura’s power is like Medusa’s in this episode, then it is like thatof her disembodied head: powerful, certainly, but ultimately directed and appro-priated by another.

Petrarch’s Medusa is less a living, threatening, powerful female agent, andmore a manipulated and severed head of a prior conquest. When Petrarch returnsto the Medusa myth in the tercets, he figures her always in the same terms thatOvid does after she is killed, and her power appropriated, by Perseus. As we haveseen earlier, it is only when her head is used as a weapon by Perseus that it turnsmen into marble. So when Petrarch rhapsodizes about Laura-Medusa’s petrifyinggaze, we should pause when we notice that it turns him to marble rather thanstone:

dico le chiome bionde, e ’l crespo laccio,

che sı soavemente lega et stringe

l’alma che d’umiltate e non d’altr’armo.

L’ombra sua sola fa ’l mio cor un ghiaccio,

et di bianca paura il viso tinge;

ma li occhi anno vertu di farne un marmo. (9–14)

(I mean the blond locks and the curling snare that so softly bind tight my soul,

which I arm with humility and nothing else./Her very shadow turns my heart to ice

and tinges my face with white fear, but her eyes have the power to turn it to marble.)

(1976: 342)

Laura’s ‘chiome bionde’ (‘blond locks’; 9) are in stark contrast to the classicalimage of Medusa with her frightful, serpentine hair. Although at first the use of‘vertu’ (‘virtue’; 14) to describe the power of her eyes to deprive men of life through atransformation into marble seems misplaced, perhaps even ironic, it clarifies,through Ovidian intertext, that the episodes Petrarch recalls in this sonnet concernMedusa after the slaying.

By figuring Laura as Medusa after the slaying, Petrarch seems to be reser-ving a measure of control over her influence and her power. The change in herpower’s effects, from stone to marble, furthermore draws attention to thereversal of what her power represents: from the history-less void of her cavefrom which no man ever returns, to the monumentalized fame of Cepheus’sbanquet. When Perseus describes the fallen warriors he sees in the gorgon’scave as he proceeds to his encounter with her – ‘passimque per agros/perque


vias vidisse hominum simulacra ferarumque/in silicem ex ipsis visa conversaMedusa’ (‘On all sides through the fields and along the ways he saw the formsof men and beasts changed into stone by one look at Medusa’s face’; Ovid,1916: 232, 779–781) – the implication is that the names of the men, linkeddirectly to fame, die with them since the only one to learn of their fate ishimself about to die. It is only in Perseus’s hands that the Medusa becomes atool of immortality, as illustrated by the wedding banquet scene in Cepheus’spalace in Book 5 of the Metamorphoses, where petrification into marble isexplicitly linked to fame and exemplarity in the case of Phineus.11 Perseus’sencounter with Phineus is particularly relevant to Petrarch’s appropriation ofthis scene because it is the first time that Medusan petrification is linkedexplicitly to fame. Before Phineus turns to marble, Perseus tells him:

‘quod’ ait, ‘timidissime Phineu, et possum tribuisse et magnum est munus inerti, pone

metum! tribuam: nullo violabere ferro. quin etiam mansura dabo monimenta per

aevum, inque domo soceri semper spectabere nostri, ut mea se sponsi soletur imagine

coniunx.’ dixit et in partem Phorcynida transtulit illam, ad quam se trepido Phineus

obverterat ore. (5.224–5.231)

(‘Most craven Phineus, dimiss your fears; what I can give (and ‘tis a great boon for your

coward soul), I will grant: you shall not suffer by the sword. Nay, but I will make of you

a memorial that shall endure for ages; and in the house of my father-in-law you shall

always stand on view, that so my wife [Andromeda] may find solace in the statue of her

promised lord!’ So saying, he bore the gorgon-head where Phineus had turned his fear-

struck face.) (Ovid, 1916: 253, 255)

Perseus promises him immortality through monumentalization, yet to an unex-pected end: Phineus will be immortalized as a most timid and submissive warrior, asan example for others to see:

. . . saxoque oculorum induruit umor, sed tamen os timidum vultusque in marmore

supplex submissaeque manus faciesque obnoxia mansit. (5.233–5.235)

(. . . the very tears upon his cheeks were changed to stone. And now in marble was fixed

the cowardly face, the suppliant look, the pleading hands, the whole cringing attitude.)

(Ovid, 1916: 255)

Even though Phineus is the last warrior standing, so to speak, implying that hewas the most courageous and talented of his cohort, he will forever be rememberedas a coward, and will serve as a reminder of Perseus’s victory over him. WhereasMedusa’s lair is hidden, the stone statuary a silent testimony to the warriors’ failureto defeat the female monster, the wedding banquet is public, and Phineus is turnedinto a monument of Perseus’s victory for Andromeda’s significantly female gaze. Bydefeating Medusa, Perseus turns her passive power into an active one, turns her

Feng 503

power to erase men by turning them into earth (stone) into his power to immortalizemen by turning them into public sculpture (marble).

Petrarch’s reference to this specific episode has far-reaching discursive conse-quences for it echoes Petrarch’s writings on poetic immortality in the LatinFamiliares 24.10, the famous Ode to Horace, where Petrarch privileges the poeticplume over the tools of a sculptor:12

Sculpunt que rigido marmore durius

Heroas veteres sique firent, novos,

Eternam meritis et memoram notam

Affixam calamo, nequa premat dies. (30–33)

(Your pen carves ancient heroes in something

harder than marble, and, if there be any, new heroes as well

in words of everlasting and eternal praise

such as time cannot erase.) (Petrarca, 1975: 336)

By telling Horace that his pen carves ancient heroes into something harder thanmarble, Petrarch compares military power and poetic power. This is similar to whatwe witness in the Ovidian scene: military power (Phineus) confronts and loses to thepower of art (Perseus with Medusa’s head). In his final moments of life, Phineus isimmortalized as a coward; his past military accomplishments cease to define him,and no longer carry meaning. At the heart of the Ovidian episode, and Petrarch’s useof it, is exemplarity: both Perseus and Petrarch are given the power to confer immor-tality and create monuments. The key to the ode is recognizing that Petrarch doesnot make an equal analogy between writing poetry and sculpting, meaning thatpoetry, the written word and the page uponwhich it is written, is evenmore immortalthan a sculpture.

The privileging of poetry over sculpting as an artistic medium recurs in RVF 104,a sonnet addressed to Pandolfo Malatesta, and calls into question the power of thebeloved as Medusa:

L’aspectata vertu, che ’n voi fioriva

quando Amor comincio darvi bataglia,

produce or frutto, che quel fiore aguaglia,

et che mia speme fa venire a riva.

Pero mi dice il cor ch’io in carte scriva

cosa, onde ’l vostro nome in pregio saglia,

che ’n nulla parte sı saldo s’intaglia

per far di marmo una persona viva. (1–8)

(The hoped-for virtue that was flowering in you at the age when Love first gave you bat-

tle, now produces fruits that are worthy of the flower and make my hope come


true./Therefore my heart tells me I should write on paper something to increase your

fame, for nowhere can sculpture be solid enough to give a person life through marble.)

(Petrarca, 1976: 206)

In this sonnet, Petrarch assumes the power he initially seemed to grant Laurathrough her association withMedusa by explicitly telling Pandolfo that he will honorhim in verse. His power is to grant everlasting life since in the second quatrain heclaims that nowhere other than ‘in carta’ (‘on paper’; 5) can a sculpture be hardenough to give someone life through marble. Sculptures proper are frail in compari-son to the poetic word, as he explains in the tercets:

Credete voi che Cesare o Marcello

o Paolo od Affrican fossin cotali

per incude gia mai ne per martello?

Pandolfo mio, quest’opere son frali

a�llungo andar, ma ’l nostro studio e quello

che fa per fama gli uomini immortali. (9–14)

(Do you believe that Caesar or Marcellus or Paulus or Africanus ever became

so famous because of any hammer or anvil?/My Pandolfo, those works are frail in

the long run, but our study is the one that makes men immortal through fame.)

(Petrarca, 1976: 206)

Again, military power (represented by the sequence of great rulers, beginning withCaesar) is given significance only by way of the poet’s pen, not the sculptor’s tools.The distinction made between the two arts elevates poetry as a living monument.That is, before the slaying, Medusa purveyed a pure mortality: her gaze turned meninto stone returning them to an elemental earthiness. Her severed head, used as a toolby Perseus, allowed Perseus to fulfill the role of sculptor, yet even marble is not asdurable as the poetry written by Petrarch using Laura (under the guise of Medusa’shead) as a tool.

Through a series of Ovidian references, Petrarch undermines the power ofLaura as Medusa by figuring her as Medusa’s severed head, and presenting heras a tool used in his own poetic process. Leonard Barkan (1986: 209) hasnoted: ‘the Medusa, like the Daphne myth in Petrarch’s hands, becomes anemblem of poetry,’ yet it is the nuances of the myth that have gone unnoticedby scholars; nuances, moreover, which are central to Petrarch’s concerns aboutthe power of poetic agency in fixing and altering reputation for history. Thatis, Laura’s role in the so-called Medusa sonnets is as her severed head, adisembodied body part that lacks agency and becomes a tool in the handsof the poet. It is not Medusa’s power of petrification that characterizesPetrarch’s appropriation of the myth, it is his ability to harness and wieldher power.

Feng 505

If Petrarch is comparing himself to Perseus, then the traditional view ofPetrarch as being threatened by the power of the female beloved must besignificantly revised. To understand how Petrarch figures his conquest, likePerseus’s, by appropriating and instrumentalizing the power of the beloved, Iturn now to Petrarch’s exchange with Geri Gianfigliazzi.13 Again employingOvid’s Medusa myth, and again turning on the distinction between Medusa asagent and Medusa as instrument, Petrarch’s advice to Gianfigliazzi lays out thestrategy for the poet’s conquest of the beloved’s agency through a matter ofreflection.

In the first sonnet of the exchange, Gianfigliazzi seeks advice on how to survivethe battle of love – a war he claims Petrarch has already won:

Messer Francesco, chi d’amor sospira

per donna ch’esser pur vuolgli guerrera,

et come piu merze grida, et piu gli e fera,

calendogli i duo sol’ che piu desira. (1–4)

(Messer Francesco, he who sighs in love for a lady who still wills to be his enemy, and

the more he cries mercy the crueler she is to him, hiding from him the two suns that he

most desires.) (Petrarca, 1976: 608)

Gianfigliazzi begins with a description of unrequited love that summarizesthe power dynamic of Petrarch’s entire poetic collection: Petrarch is inspiredby the love of a woman who wages war on him, yet the more he is spurned,the more he desires her. Gianfigliazzi claims he is unable to win his love battleand attributes his defeat to his inability to ‘ragionare’ like Petrarch. As we seein the tercets, Petrarch is figured as an intellectual, rather than a love-sickpoet:

Voi ragionate con Amor sovente

et nulla sua condition so v’e chiusa

per l’alto ingegno de la vostra mente;

la mia, che sempre mai co llui e usa,

et men ch’al primo il conosce al presente,

consigliate, et cio fia sua vera scusa. (9–14)

(You speak often with Love, and I know that no condition of his is hidden from you,

thanks to the high wit of your mind./My mind, which has always been with him and

understands him less now than at the beginning, do you counsel; and that will be my

true excuse.) (Petrarca, 1976: 608)

Petrarch’s habit of speaking, or reasoning, with Love seemingly protects himfrom perishing. The intellect is figured as Petrarch’s weapon against the beloved in


the war of love – a detail that recalls Perseus and Minerva’s shield. Indeed,Gianfigliazzi says it is Petrarch’s ‘alto ingegno’ (‘high wit’; 11) that distinguisheshim as a poet-lover, and sets him up as an exemplar for other love poets – a model ofbehavior.

Petrarch’s response in RVF 179, ‘Geri, quando talor meco s’adira,’ continues thethread concerning wisdom (‘alto ingegno’). In this poem, Petrarch recognizes thepower of his beloved, under the guise ofMedusa, only to then strip her of that whichhas heretofore defined her. In response to the question of how Petrarch manages thecruelty of his beloved, Petrarch replies:

Ovunque ella sdegnando li occhi gira

che di luce privar mia vita spera

le mostro i miei pien’ d’umilta sı vera,

ch’a forza ogni suo sdegno indietro tira.

E ccio non fusse, andrei non altramente

a veder lei, che ‘l volto di Medusa,

che facea marmo diventar la gente. (5–11)

(Wherever she angrily turns her eyes, who hopes to deprive my life of light, I

show her mine full of such true humility that she necessarily draws back all

her anger./And if that were not so, I would not go to see her otherwise than to

see the face of Medusa, which made people become marble.) (Petrarca, 1976: 324)

Petrarch’s eyes serve the same purpose as Perseus’s shield: they deflect theharm of the gorgon’s gaze. At the end of Book 4 of the Metamorphoses,Perseus uses the shield of Minerva – symbol of wisdom – to avoid looking atMedusa directly (Ovid, 1916: 4.779–4.785). Thus wisdom is understood to medi-ate Perseus’s sight during the fateful scene: his ability to look beyond Medusadeflects the gorgon’s power long enough for him to slay her. Yet, in Petrarch’sresponse, the detail concerning marble in the tercet (‘’l volto di Medusa,/che faceamarmo diventar la gente,’ ‘the face of Medusa, which made people becomemarble’) suggests he is speaking of Medusa’s severed head, when she lacks herown agency. Furthermore, what is striking here is the implied repetititon of thescene – he would not otherwise go to see her face if he were not certain that hewas immune to her gaze – which suggests that Petrarch’s power, and his immor-tality, rests in his ability to look at her and remain alive. He figures himself as aliving marble monument, the Perseus who slays Medusa and can look at her. Theconsequence of this for Laura’s representation as Medusa is one of agency, sincePetrarch can choose when to look at Laura-Medusa. At the root of this state-ment is a conflicting view of poetic inspiration: despite Laura’s paronomasticpresence throughout the landscape, and her portrait which Petrarch carries inhis heart (RVF 90), the poet figures himself as able to seek out and refute poetic

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inspiration. Thus, Laura becomes the means through which Petrarch monumen-talizes himself only when he sees fit.14

Petrarch finalizes his self-aggrandizement in the closing tercet of the sonnet wherewe encounter his explicit advice to the lovelorn Gianfigliazzi:

Cosı dunque fa’ tu: ch’i’ veggio exclusa

ogni altra aita, e ’l fuggir val nıente

dinanzi a l’ali che ’l signor nostro usa. (12–14)

(You therefore do the same; for I see all other help cut off, and flight avails nothing

against the wings that our lord uses.) (Petrarca, 1976: 324)

Petrarch sets himself up as an example to be followed. He urges his friend not toflee, as has presumably been his custom, but to instead confront and slay thebeloved-Medusa. The implication is that Gianfigliazzi’s own ‘ingegno,’ likeMinerva’s shield, can protect him and allow him to gaze upon the Medusa withoutfear of death. As a result, the figure of the beloved no longer possesses the petrifyingand threatening power she seemed to have as Medusa. Laura is stripped of heragency, and Petrarch’s conquest over her, through wisdom, becomes the examplehe provides Gianfigliazzi in the final tercet.

Petrarch’s advice to Gianfigliazzi imparts the knowledge of how to harness thenegative power of the beloved-Medusa into poetic productivity. Here, we confrontthe authoritative voice of a mature poet who has finally come to the realization thathis ‘ingegno’ could conquer the beloved and grant him the power to confer and denyimmortality, much like Perseus. The sonnets aboutMedusa, thus, become themonu-ments of the poet’s conquest. This sense of authority is a parody of Dante’s distinc-tion between the letter and the spirit in the Medusa episode of Inferno 9, sincePetrarch’s lesson to Gianfigliazzi (and, presumably, to the reader) is, essentially,to look behind the veil. Whereas Dante needed Virgil to cover his eyes to protecthim from the vision of the Medusa, Petrarch looked at her, emerged victorious, andcontinued to look at her. Petrarch’s use of Medusa points to a deliberate rejectionof Dante’s eschatological concerns embodied by the Medusa of the Commedia,passing directly to that other kind of immortality sought after by both poets: self-monumentality and poetic immortality.

Patrons, beloveds and poetic inspiration

The previous section has shown us the way in which Petrarch undercuts and appro-priates the very power that he would grant to the beloved. This strategy of reflectionand instrumentalization, of turning the passive and captive beauty of poetry into anactive tool of immortalization and political statement, suggests Petrarch’s concep-tion of the real political power of poetry. We should not be surprised, then, when wediscover the same strategy of appropriation and reversal in Petrarch’s neo-Latinhumanist works. Mastering that which he would appear to be mastered by,


Petrarch turns to his own masters, the moneyed and powerful patrons, and enacts aPerseus-like critique and reversal of their power.

Petrarch’s relationship to political figures, and his involvement in a system ofpatronage involving families viewed by several of his contemporaries as tyrants,was a concern even in his lifetime.15 For example, Boccaccio criticized his decisionin 1351 to remain under the patronage of Giovanni Visconti instead of returning toFlorence to not only officially establish himself there, but, most importantly, toreceive the patrimony confiscated from Petrarch’s father upon his and his family’sexile.16 For Boccaccio, Petrarch’s decision to remain with the Visconti implicatedhim in their political tyranny. The discomfort Boccaccio felt regarding Petrarch’spolitical ties has been echoed in modern scholarship, as well. Victoria Kirkham’srecent examination of the five speeches (c. 1353–1373) to ‘promote the politics ofruling despots’ takes as its subject something that Petrarch scholars have usuallyignored since these speeches sharply contradict the carefully constructed image ofthe apolitical poet.17 Scholars have preferred to takePetrarch at hisword, believing inthe separation between his public and private personae, as well as politics and poetry.But, asKirkhamnotes, ‘Although they [the speeches] contradict ourmythic picture ofPetrarch, they reflect a system of courtly patronage that would flourish in theRenaissance. ‘‘Rhetoric was the coin that paid for his keep,’’ permitting him leisurefor serious literary projects’ (2009: 10–11). Kirkham’s presentation of Petrarch as acourtier avant la lettre is a most significant contribution to Petrarch studies because itrecognizes how integral a public figure Petrarch had been for several of his patrons,despite his claims to the contrary. But she, too, falls into the trap of the poet’s appar-ent ‘politics of the language’ – that he uses Latin to engage in politics, and the ver-nacular to distance himself from it – by not connecting the implications of thesespeeches to his larger ars poetica. The appropriation of the Medusa myth in hispoetry offers one angle by which this connection between Petrarch’s poetry and pol-itics can be viewed. Though Petrarch had several patrons, it is in the patronage ofKing Robert of Naples and the Colonna family that he employs a strategy of poeticappropriation in his political rhetoric. That is, Petrarch plays Perseus to his benefac-tors, turning them to marble in order to mark his own victories.

The framing and narrative structure of Petrarch’s Latin epicAfrica – in particular,the opening dedication to King Robert, and Petrarch’s self-inscription into Book 9 –complicates the presentation of Petrarch’s relationship to his patron through itsexamination of the nature of poetic inspiration and immortality.18 At the onset ofBook 1, Petrarch addresses the monarch in a lengthy aside (72 verses) that praises thepoet as much as it does the dedicatee.19 Petrarch assures the king that the epic willbring him solace, and that if the reading proves to be burdensome he will berewarded in the end with a great reward, ‘. . . nam cunta legenti/Forsitan occurretuacuas quod mulceat aures/Peniteatque minus suscepti in fine laboris’ (1.24–1.26);‘and should you find the reading burdensome, the ending may reward you for yourpains’; (1977: 2). This initially begs that the epic be read through an Augustinianhermeneutic, as established in De Doctrina Christiana, by likening it to Scripture:the more laborious and difficult the reading, the sweeter the reward that is reaped in

Feng 509

the end. Although this further glorifies the content, the life of Scipio, as well as theRepublic, Petrarch does not claim himself to be a scriba Dei, as does Dante, forexample. Yet, the authorial voice is strengthened in its alignment with a ‘highercause,’ a moral authority or exemplum rather than a Christian eschatological one.Although Petrarch, unlike Dante, does not claim to be concerned with the souls ofhis readers, or even of King Robert, by adopting this stance Petrarch is able to makehimself eternal. Both of these aspects decisively inform the way in which the life ofKing Robert is depicted in the dedication. Petrarch provides a series of reasons forwhich he has not undertaken to write the epic about his patron:

Ipse tuos actus meritis ad sidera tollam

Laudibus, atque alio fortassis carmine quondam

Mors modo me paulum expectet! non longa petuntur

Nomen et alta canam Siculi miracula regis,

Non audita procul, sed que modo uidimus omnes

Omnia. (1.40–1.45)

(For with the praise that you have merited/I shall extol your exploits to the stars,/in a

day to come perchance I may sing of the King of Sicily, his fame/and his miraculous

deeds, not yet well known/abroad but which we all have witnessed.) (Petrarca, 1977: 2)

Initially, it appears as thoughPetrarch is praising his patron: he hasmerited praise,he is famous, and his deeds are miraculous. So praiseworthy is King Robert thatsomedayPetrarchwill laud him in an epic (carmine; in a song). Yet, in praisingRobertof Naples, Petrarch simultaneously undermines his accomplishments and, mostimportantly, renders him mortal. That is, the hyperbole used in characterizing hisdeeds as miraculous (miracula) is undercut by Petrarch’s claim that Robert’s fame (adirect result of thesemiraculous deeds) is not known abroad.His fame is limited to hiscourt, thus it does not matter that those around him might be able to attest to thesedeeds; King Robert lacks an epic, and, by extension, immortality.

Petrarch goes on to explain that it is the practice of poets who undertake thewriting of an epic to turn to ancient times for their subject matter. The excuse seemsvalid enough, were it not for the third reason given: that Petrarch’s novice handcould not do justice to King Robert’s greatness. The topos of humility employed hereis a common rhetorical device, one that implies the poet’s subservience to his patron,as well as a lack in accomplishments compared to his. However, when we examinePetrarch’s reasoning more closely, we begin to question whether or not it is KingRobert who is lacking in the greatness required to become the subject of an epic, andespecially, what role he plays in Petrarch’s poetics, when the poet writes:

Nunc teneras frondes humili de stipite uulsi,

Scipiade egregio primos comitante paratus:

Tunc ualidos carpam ramos; tu nempe iuuabis

Materia, generose, tua, calamumque labantem


Firmabis, meritumque decus continget amanti

Altera temporibus pulcerrima laurea nostris. (65–70)

(For the nonce I pluck/the tenderest foliage from a lowly bush/and choose famed Scipio

to share my course./One day I’ll gather sturdier boughs, and you,/most generous King,

will help me with your deeds/and lend more power to my faltering pen./Another crown

of laurel, the most fair/of all our times, will justly then reward/with honor one who

holds your person dear.) (Petrarca, 1977: 3)

Initially Petrarch seems to place Robert above him: he claims that his talents arenot great enough to write an epic in honor of the king, so he has instead chosenScipio from a ‘lowly bush.’ Yet, as the passage continues, we see that Robert has notyet reached the ‘sturdier boughs,’ and his lack of epic is due to his lack of accom-plishments, not Petrarch’s novice pen. Only his future deeds will enable Petrarch’ssupposedly ‘faltering pen’ to rise to the occasion, implying that the king’s future fameis beholden to Petrarch’s future writings about him.

The dedication of the poem is meant to glorify King Robert, yet as we have seen,Petrarch praises him while at the same time pointing out his flaws. After describingthe victories of Scipio Africanus in the eight books that follow, Petrarch closes theepic by crowning himself (under the guise of the character ‘Franciscus’), and makesseveral moves that demonstrate the power of poetry over that of military or politicalpower, and theway inwhich poetic agency is negotiated and appropriated. If in Book1 he claims the king is not ready to be immortalized in an epic, in Book 9 Petrarchshows that he has already reached the pinnacle of poetic accomplishment by inscrib-ing himself into the epic. There we encounter Petrarch’s epic hero Scipio and hisbiographer Ennius20 on a boat leaving the African shores after his victories. Notingthe poet’s silence on the boat, Scipio implores Ennius to lift their weary hearts withsweet verse. Surprisingly, Scipio’s biographer has no tale to tell, despite having, onemay assume, witnessed the exploits documented in the previous books of the epic.Instead, Ennius describes his dream vision of Homer who appeared to him while theoutcome of the war was still in doubt to deliver two prophecies concerning the futureof Latin arms and literature. First, he assures Ennius that Latium would ultimatelysucceed in the battle.21 The second prophecy concerning letters is prompted byEnnius noticing a young man in the distance who uncannily resembles Petrarch:

Hic ego — nam longe clausa sub valle sedentem

Aspexi iuvenem— ‘Dux o carissime, quisnam est,

Quem video teneras inter consistere lauros

Et viridante comas meditantem incingere ramo?

Nescio quid, nisi fallor, enim sub pectore versat

Egregiumque altumque nimis’. (216–221)

(There in the distance I could see a youth/seated within a valley closed by hills./I asked:

‘O cherished guide, disclose, I pray,/who is it I behold taking his rest/under the tender

Feng 511

laurel? Lo, he seems/about to bind his locks with those green fronds./I know not

what he ponders in his heart, but surely it must be, unless I err,/some high and noble

purpose.’) (Petrarca, 1977: 230)

Though the young man in the vision is not yet named, there are several cluesthat point to Petrarch: the youth is seated ‘within a valley closed by hills,’ an allu-sion to Petrarch’s preferred haunt Vaucluse, whose etymology means, precisely, aclosed-off valley; he is preparing to crown himself with laurel fronds, a foreshadow-ing of Petrarch’s own upcoming laurel coronation by King Robert. The reader’ssuspicions that the youth might, indeed, be Petrarch is soon confirmed by Homer’sresponse:

Francisco cui nomen erit; qui grandia facta,

Vidisti que cunta oculis, ceu corpis in unum

Colliget: Hispanas acies Libieque labores

Scipiadamque tuum: titulusque poematis illi

AFRICA. (9.232–9.236)

(He will be called Franciscus;

and all the glorious exploits you have seen

he will assemble in one volume—

all the deeds in Spain, the arduous Libyan trials;

and he will call his poem Africa. (Petrarca, 1977: 231)

Homer is figured as an Adamic figure, whose power of language calls Petrarchinto being. His prophecy inscribes Petrarch not only into the landscape of the epicpoem, but into Italian history as the poet who returns the Latin muses from exile andwho documents the life and travails of Scipio, the newAeneas, in an epic poemwhichwe, as readers, have nearly completed reading. By inscribing himself into his epic oforigins, Petrarch constructs his own fame as the poet of a new Republic and GoldenAge; the age when the muses return to Italy. The self-aggrandizement of such ametafictional move claims Petrarch for epochs that do not exist: both the past ageof Republican glory and an unknown future time of glory. That it will be a poet whoushers in this new age privileges the poetic over the military crown, thereby makingKing Robert reliant upon Petrarch for his fame, but figuring the poet as the agentbehind his own immortality.

For writingAfrica, Petrarch would receive his poetic laurels fromKing Robert, towhom he had dedicated his epic poem, in a public ceremony on 8 April 1341 atop theCapitoline Hill, symbolic seat of Roman military power. A closer look at Africa,however, shows that Petrarch is playing a sort of Perseus, enlisting the king’s powerto help his own claim for renownwhile at the same time denying the king self-agency.The self-coronation by Franciscus essentially refutes the symbolic necessity of thepatron in the immortalization of the poet. By immortalizing himself, Petrarchemphasizes the notion that it is the poetic pen that bestows immortality upon the


poet, not necessarily the patron. Hence, although the patron and the epic hero bothrequire a poet for immortality, the poet does not require either. From the classicalauctores the poet receives eloquence, from patrons and heroes the subject matter.This discursive power play, so to speak, can be read as a critique of King Robert’sown politics as practiced in his Neopolitan court. Historians have long been fasci-nated with the prominence of patronage in King Robert’s court, and, as SamanthaKelly has noted, ‘its function as an engine of royal propaganda’ (2003: 25). Robert’srule, it should be remembered, happened only by default. The death of his brother,Charles Martel, heir apparent to the Angevin dynasty, put Robert in power andrequired, in a sense, legitimization. It is here where Kelly’s recent scholarship eluci-dates a reign in which the patron–poet relationship became so essential. Kelly cata-logues the various ways in which Robert attempted to legitimize his rule: from thenumerous sermons he wrote, to the attempt at having his deceased brother Louis ofAnjou canonized, to filling his court with secular men of letters. As the historiannotes, ‘[a]s for the men who did attract royal patronage, their humanism turns out toconsist largely of their friendship with Petrarch—a friendship which, in any case,started with Petrarch’s visit and not in the 1320s’ (2003: 40). Thus, Petrarch’s treat-ment of Robert in the dedication of the Africa, in comparison to his self-coronationas poet laureate at the end, seems to acknowledge Robert’s attempt at legitimizinghis political rule through artistic patronage, while simultaneously reminding himthat it is the poet that crowns the king with immortality, revealing Petrarch’s upcom-ing coronation by the king as purely ceremonial.

The issue at hand is one of agency and the way in which Petrarch turns inside-outthe relationship between those who have passive rule (Medusa, King Robert) andturn men to stone and those who turn that passivity toward their own purposes(Perseus, Petrarch) and turn men into marble monuments. Petrarch’s discursivetreatment of Robert in the Africa is similar to the examination of political powerversus poetry in RVF 10, addressed to Giacomo Colonna in c. 1337–1338.22 In thispoem, Petrarch plays with the Latinized form of the Roman Colonna family name,attributing to them powers traditionally associated with laurel, as a way to eventu-ally deny them agency in the construction of their fame, much as he did in the case ofRobert and the Africa. Thus, the vernacular lyric space initially carved out for thepoet’s self-reflection becomes a political stage where power is negotiated.

As Santagata has aptly noted, references to the Colonna in the Rerum vulgariumfragmenta are never explicit: the family is only ever referred to by its Latin surname,or as figurative ‘columns.’ Because these references have seemed so tenuous, criticismhas been hesitant to read too deeply into the shadowy presence of the Colonna in thepoetic collection. However, these references are considerably strengthened by thefact that the Colonna coat of arms prominently features a column in the center ofthe shield. Petrarch opens the poem by using the figure of the column as a way ofpraising the family:

Glorıosa columna in cui s’appoggia

nostra speranza e ’l gran nome latino,

Feng 513

ch’ancor non torse del vero camino

l’ira di Giove per ventosa pioggia. (1–4)

(Glorious Column onwhom rests our hope and the great renown of Latium, whom even

the ire of Jove in the windy rain has not yet turned aside from the true path.) (Petrarca,

1976: 44)

Petrarch mixes the sacred and the profane in his exaltation of the Colonna family.He initially pays homage to his patron’s family by emphasizing the Roman roots ofthe blood line: he refers to them by the Latinized form of their name – Columna –which he connects directly to Latium.23 This appeal to their civic and familial pride istempered by the allusion to Christ and the pillar of Pilate when Petrarch claims that‘nostra speranza’ (‘our hope’) rests on the ‘gloriosa columna’(‘glorious column’).‘Columna’ here evokes the scene of Christ’s flagellation on the column before thecrucifixion: the hope of mankind resides in the man tied to the column by the Romanguards. Thus, the Colonna are figured as the saviors of mankind, in whom the hopeof humanity resides. This reading elevates the family to the status of moral exem-plars, pillars of strength. The power of the Colonna seemingly derives from theetymology and connotations of their name, implicitly confirming, again, Dante’sassertion in the Vita nova that ‘nomina sunt consequentia rerum’ (‘names are theconsequences of things’) since not even Jove can make the Colonna stray from the‘vero camino,’ (‘true path’) (Alighieri, 1999: 4).

The claim that the ‘columna’ cannot even be destroyed or deterred by Jove’sthunderbolts (his wrath) recalls an important property of the laurel tree, ratherthan an actual column: according to mythology, the laurel is indestructible, imper-vious to even Jove’s fury. Thus, the Colonna are defined by a characteristic unique tothe laurel, symbol of immortality and poetic inspiration. This figuration of theColonna as a laurel-like column introduces the role of the poet in transformingordinary objects into sources of poetic inspiration, a theme that he develops in thesecond quatrain where he transforms the urban domestic space of the Colonnafamily into a pastoral landscape:

qui non palazzi, non theatro o loggia,

ma ’n lor vece un abete, un faggio, un pino

tra l’erba verde e ’l bel monte vicino,

onde si scende poetando et poggia. (5–8)

(here are no palaces no theater, no gallery, but in their stead a fir tree, a beech, a

pine—amid the green grass and the nearby mountain where we climb and descend

poeticizing.) (Petrarca, 1976: 44)

The civic space occupied by the Colonna is turned into a pastoral retreat thatinspires poetry. The Colonna palaces, theater and loggia are transformed into the fir,beech and pine trees situated near a mountain which Petrarch climbs and descends


while writing poetry. The culmination of images presents the poet’s ability to trans-form the symbols that represent the civic power of the Colonna – the column, nowlaurel-like, and their property – into the natural elements that inspire the poet. Thetransformations do not end there, however, since Petrarch also transforms himselfinto a nightingale who occupies the same space as his Colonna patrons:

levan di terra al ciel nostr’intellecto;

e ’l rosigniuol che dolcemente all’ombra

tutte le notti si lamenta et piagne,

d’amorosi penseri il cor ne ’ngombra:

ma tanto ben sol tronchi, et fai imperfecto,

tu che da noi, signor mio, ti scompagne. (9–14)

(all these lift our intellects from earth to Heaven; and the nightingale that sweetly in the

shadow every night laments and weeps/burdens our hearts with thoughts of love. But so

much good you alone cut short andmake imperfect, for you keep yourself, my Lord, far

from us.) (Petrarca, 1976: 44)

The initial description of the Colonna as a laurel-like column among pastoralsurroundings not only inspires the poet, raising his intellect to the heavens, but, mostimportantly, provides him (the ‘rosigniuol’ of verse 10) with shade. This image of apoet resting in the shade recalls the description of the laurel tree in Petrarch’s cor-onation speech.24 Delivered from atop the Capitoline Hill, seat of Roman political,not poetic, power, Petrarch discussed the significance of the laurel as crown to bothCaesars and poets, in an attempt to delineate the role of the poet in the modern city,claiming that:

Et preterea arbor hec umbrifera et quieti laborantium accommoda unde est illud

[Horace] oratii XLIIII oda ‘Spissa ramis laurea fervidos/excludet ictus solis’ et illud

eiusdem oda XLVI ‘Longaque fessum militia latus/depone sub lauru mea,’ hoc secun-

dum. Neque hec proprietas incongrue ad cesares refertur ac poetas ut illis post bellorum

his pro laboribus studiorum requies promissa videatur. (Petrarca, 1874: 324)25

(In the second place, the laurel tree is shady, and affords a resting place for those who

labor. Whence comes the lines of Horace in his 44th Ode: ‘Spissa ramis laurea fervidos/

excludet ictus solis,’ and in his 46th ‘Longaque fessum militia latus/depone sub lauru

mea.’ Not inappropriately is this property of the laurel associated with Caesars andwith

poets: for it may symbolize the rest that is in store for the former after their toils in

warfare, and for the latter after their toils in study.) (Wilkins, 1955: 309–310)

In the coronation speech, the laurel tree is figured as providing shade for thepolitical leader and poet, both of whom are rewarded with immortality for theirrespective labors. In RVF 10, however, the poet-nightingale is shaded by the

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‘columna’ and the various Colonna civic spaces that are figured as trees. Thus, theposition of the patron in the analogy has changed in the poem: the Colonna patron isnot figured as residing under the shadow of the laurel with the nightingale (Petrarch),rather he is the source of shade. On the one hand, presenting the patron as a symboliclaurel tree figuratively acknowledges his role as Petrarch’s protettore and implies anatural relationship between the poet-nightingale and his patron; on the other hand,the patron is denied the immortality associated with the political laurel crownthrough military triumphs, and is transformed into a source of inspiration thatenables poetic production.

By attributing laurel-like attributes to the patron-as-column, the Colonna patronis aligned with the figure of Daphne, and by extension Laura in that he is granted thesame properties bestowed upon the beloved through paronomasia (lauro–Laura).Thus, just as a poet needs a beloved, so too does he need a patron, yet both figures arepresented as tools of inspiration, lacking in their own agency. Petrarch does notdescribe the accomplishments of the Colonna in his verses; rather, he describes whatthey have to offer him: the means and place to write his poetry, and the rawmaterialsfor his subject. Though in this poem the Colonna patron is denied a place under thelaurel tree, and the immortality associated with the political laurel crown, Petrarchdoes immortalize him by transforming him into a source of poetic inspiration.

Conclusion

As has been explored in this article, the figure of Petrarch’s Medusa is as multi-faceted and as complex as she is in Ovid’sMetamorphoses. I have argued that the keyto Petrarch’s Medusa poems is recognizing Petrarch’s alignment with Perseus afterthe slaying when the disembodied head of Medusa becomes a poetic tool of self-aggrandizement. That Laura-Medusa has the ability to turn Petrarch into marble,rather than stone, points to the beloved’s lack of agency. That Petrarch can look ather repeatedly, and at will, nuances the paradigm of power between poet-lover andbeloved that has generally characterized his lyric collection. There is no denying thatthe religious and eschatological implications of petrification that have been arguedby several scholars elucidate an important aspect of Petrarch’s writings about reli-gion and his own battle with the double aspect of gloria. Indeed, it is an integral partof the myth the poet himself creates, not only within the lyric collection, but also inthe Secretum and Triumphi. However, reading Petrarch’s Medusa as solely an obs-tacle to Paradiso limits our understanding of the multi-faceted dimension ofPetrarch’s larger cultural project and œuvre. In particular, the traditional approachto Laura-Medusa has taken for granted both how close a reader Petrarch was of hisfavored classical authors – in this analysis, Ovid – and also the often intersectingtrajectories of his vernacular and Latin cultural projects. By denying Laura-Medusathe power of agency in his vernacular poems, Petrarch is able to figuratively harnessthe power of immortalization, emphasizing the poetic process as a means toward thisend – a preeminent topic in his Latin works. Petrarch’s denial of Laura-Medusa’spower over him mirrors the way in which he treats his patrons in the two examples


presented from the Latin Africa and Colonna poem. Thus, the poet’s encounterswith Medusa, and his recovery of the political use of Medusa in Ovid, allows him tostage his relationship to his patrons and present patronage and love as similar sys-tems of power ultimately controlled by the poet’s ability to bestow or deny immor-tality upon others.

Albert R Ascoli has noted a similar use of Medusa in Coluccio Salutati’s appro-priation (or rather, allegorization) of the myth in his De laboribus Herculis, notingthat, ‘He [Salutati] allegorizes the shield [of Jove, upon which appears the head ofMedusa] as well asMedusa herself, as poetic eloquence, the power of rhetoric to bothilluminate and control’ (1987: 166). The connection made between Medusa’s headand the double-nature of rhetoric, as both a force that illuminates (makes clear) andcontrols, is palpable in the figure of Petrarch’s Medusa. The poet’s deliberate com-parison between the art of poetry and the art of sculpting is more reminiscent ofPetrarch’s discussions of military power than that of neo-Platonic love. Militaryheroes, not beloveds, are immortalized in statues as visible examples of admirablebehavior. Yet, both are immortalized in poetry, something more durable thanmarble, since it is the poet’s retelling of a hero’s story that grants him fame andimmortality; the image of the hero requires a narrative for exemplarity to take effect.The privileging of poetry and the poet’s pen that begins in the Medusa poems and isrestaged in other works, both Latin and vernacular, thus emphasizes a theme thatrecurs throughout Petrarch’s Latin works: that military power is transient and thepoet’s pen immortal. Amore comprehensive understanding of Petrarch’s ars poetica,one that takes into account the intellectual intersections between his Latin and ver-nacular works, points to an emerging theory of the causality exerted by human artthat informs his larger humanist project.

Funding

This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial ornon-profit sectors.

Notes

1. All citations from Petrarch’s vernacular poetry are taken from Santagata’s critical edition(Petrarca, 2001). Translations are by Robert Durling (Petrarca, 1976).

2. See Brand et al. (1962).3. Namely,RVF 51, 179, and 197. Petrarch dedicates two verses to Laura-Medusa inRVF 366

(vv. 111–112).

4. Although beyond the scope of this article, Petrarch’s portrayal of Laura as Medusa seemsto echo certain aspects of the ‘stony woman’ inDante’sRime petrose, as has been well notedby Antoni (1983) and Durling (1975; Petrarca, 1976). The most comprehensive study of

Dante’s so-called ‘minor’ poetic collection is Durling and Martinez (1990), but see alsoFenzi (1966). For Dante’s appropriation of the figure of Medusa, see especially Ascoli(1987); J Freccero (1979, 2003); Mazzotta (1979).

5. For Petrarch’s punning on his name, see especially Cesarini’s seminal article (1987).

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6. It is interesting to note the reversal in Petrarch’s application of the idea that ‘names are theconsequences of things.’ Whereas Dante famously uses this phrase to explain why hisbeloved Beatrice was thus named (Beatrice, she who blesses), Petrarch applies the maxim

to himself, rather than Laura.7. For the representation of Petrarchan subjectivity, see especially Greene (1968). See also

Mazzotta (1993: Chapter 3); Scaglione (1989); Trinkaus (1970).

8. For the importance of the Daphne–Apollo myth in Petrarch’s poetry, see Sturm-Maddox(1983, 1992); DellaNeva (1982). For general discussions of Petrarch’s appropriation ofOvid’s Daphne, see C Freccero (2001); Enterline (1994); Hardie (1999).

9. This is the second of the three ‘l’aura’ poems that present the beloved as the wind: RVF196, 197, 198.

10. The Atlas episode is Met. 4.621–4.663. All references to and translations of theMetamorphoses are taken from the Loeb edition (Ovid, 1916).

11. Although in this book Perseus uses Medusa’s head to turn other warriors into marble –

Thesceleus, (‘utque manu iaculum fatale parabat mittere, in hoc haesit signum de mar-more gestu,’5.182–5.183), and Astyages (‘naturam traxit eandem, marmoreoque manetvultusmirantis in ore,’ 5.205–5.206) – Phineus is the only one set up as an examplum, and amonument.

12. All citations from Petrarch’s Familiares are taken from Rossi’s critical edition, LeFamiliari (Petrarca, 1933). Translations are by Aldo S Bernardo (Petrarca, 1975).

13. See Santagata (Petrarca, 2001: 790) for a full transcription of the poem by Gianfigliazzi,

to which Petrarch responds with RVF 179. Translation by Durling (Petrarca, 1976:Appendix 1, p. 608).

14. See William J Kennedy’s reading of this sonnet as a Horatian configuration of art as

mechanical and technical skill, in line with medieval economic theories of labor and utilityvalue (2011).

15. The most general discussion of Petrarch’s relationship to the various tyrants of hisday continues to be that of Ernest Hatch Wilkins (1963). For more recent critical

studies see Ascoli (2011: Chapter 4); Simonetta (2004); Wallace (1997); andWojciehowski (1995).

16. The letter, dated 18 July 1351, is Epistle V in Ricci’s edition (Boccaccio, 1965).

17. Introduction, p. 10, Kirkham and Maggi (2009). See especially Kirkham’s chapter,‘Petrarch the Courtier.’

18. Scholarship devoted solely to Petrarch’sAfrica is scarce.Most recently, SimoneMarchese

(2009) has highlighted the work as the centerpiece of Petrarch’s larger project of self-fashioning and self-promotion as the leading poet-historian of his age. See also Bernardo(1962); Colilli (1988: Chapter 3); Fenzi (2003); Ferra (1984); Festa (1926); Velli (1965).

19. Latin citations from the Africa are taken from Nicola Festa’s critical edition (Petrarca,1998). Unless otherwise noted, English translations are from the Bergin and Wilsontranslation (Petrarca, 1977).

20. It is important to remember that Petrarch’s choice of Scipio as his epic hero is an odd one,

since he had already been immortalized in the Annales of Ennius.21. ‘Nec cura future/ Solicitet casus. Quoniam lux crastina campos/ Sanguine Penorum Latio

victore rigabit’ (1998: 212–214); ‘Be notmoved/by thought of misadventures yet to come;/

under the light ofmorn the fields will run/with Punic blood as Latium rules the day.’(1977:230)

22. Although the specific identity of the Colonna patron in this poem has been contested by

scholars, I follow Santagata’s theory that Petrarch sends the sonnet from Valchiusa to


Giacomo Colonna in Rome between 1337 and 1338. As Santagata notes, Carducci iden-tified the addressee as Stefano Colonna il Vecchio, arguing that Petrarch sent it on behalfof his son Giacomo and the family in the summer of 1330, urging Stefano to join the

family in Lombez (where Giacomo was bishop). Durling appears to follow this hypoth-esis, noting that Petrarch had spent the summer of 1330 with the family in France(Petrarca, 1976: note on p. 44).

23. This is at odds with the way in which Petrarch will later describe his patrons. For example,Petrarch attacks the legitimacy of Colonna power by exposing them as foreign-borntyrants in Variae 48 of 1347, the hortatory letter sent to Cola di Rienzo and

the Roman people after the former’s coup (Petrarca, 1996). Although RVF 10 was writ-ten in the late 1330s, Santagata notes that it was re-ordered as the tenth poem in thecollection in the early 1350s, which would coincide with the years immediately followingCola’s fall.

24. For a discussion of the structure, manuscript tradition, publication history and textualvariants of Petrarch’s Collatio laureationis see especially Feo (1990). More recently,Dennis Looney (2009) has read the coronation speech as Petrarch’s earliest theorizing

of the revival of the poet as an integral part of an emerging modern city.25. Citations from the LatinCollatio are taken from Petrarca (1874). English translations are

by E Wilkins (1955).

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Volto di Medusa: Monumentalizing the self in Petrarch’s Rerum vulgarium fragmenta

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