Francesca Petrarca Books

Francesco Petrarca, known in English as Petrarch, was an Italian scholar, poet, and one of the earliest Renaissance humanists, often popularly called the "father of humanism." His works, along with those of Dante Alighieri and Giovanni Boccaccio, formed the basis for the modern Italian language as developed by Pietro Bembo. Petrarch is credited with developing the sonnet, a form that became a model for lyrical poems across Europe during the Renaissance. He was also among the first to characterize the Middle Ages as a "Dark Ages."