Includes bibliographical references.

Petrarch's letters are both typical and exceptional. They are typical as records of life in the gloomy latter end of the Middle Ages in Europe, especially in Italy and southern France. They are packed with information about the literary, eccesiastical, and courtly worlds, about food, clothing, travel, medicine, agriculture, and the routine of ordinary existence. They are also typical in their expression of the ideas and responses which all men of a certain time and place must share. The letters are at the same time exceptional. Petrarch was a great poet and scholar. He was one of the initiators of the humanistic revival that was soon to become the Renaissance. He had an original, inquiring mind, which was stimulated rather than conventionalized by his classical studies. He had a very unusual taste for introspection, he examined his own behavior with pensive delight. He gives his correspondents, and posterity, the most complete picture in existence of the inner and outer life of a medieval man.

Also issued online.

BSLW RECAT 2023