{"product_id":"sonnets-and-shorter-poems-9780674062160","title":"Sonnets and Shorter Poems","description":"\u003cp\u003eIn this volume, David R. Slavitt, the distinguished translator and author of more than one hundred works of fiction, poetry, and drama, turns his skills to \u003ci\u003eIl Canzoniere\u003c\/i\u003e (Songbook) by Petrarch, the most influential poet in the history of the sonnet. In Petrarch's hands, lyric verse was transformed from an expression of courtly devotion into a way of conversing with one's own heart and mind. Slavitt renders the sonnets in \u003ci\u003eIl Canzoniere\u003c\/i\u003e, along with the shorter madrigals and ballate, in a sparkling and engaging idiom and in rhythm and rhyme that do justice to Petrarch's achievement. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eAt the center of \u003ci\u003eIl Canzoniere \u003c\/i\u003e(also known as \u003ci\u003eRime Sparse, \u003c\/i\u003eor Scattered Rhymes) is Petrarch's obsessive love for Laura, a woman Petrarch asserts he first saw at Easter Mass on April 6, 1327, in the church of Sainte-Claire d'Avignon when he was twenty-two. Though Laura was already married, the sight of her woke in the poet a passion that would last beyond her premature death on April 6, 1348, exactly twenty-one years after he first encountered her. Unlike Dante's Beatrice--a savior leading the poet by the hand toward divine love--Petrarch's Laura elicits more earthbound and erotic feelings. David Slavitt's deft new translation captures the nuanced tone of Petrarch's poems--their joy and despair, and eventually their grief over Laura's death. Readers of poetry and especially those with an interest in the sonnet and its history will welcome this volume.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAbout the Author\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eSlavitt, David R.:\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e - David R. Slavitt is a poet and the translator of more than ninety works of fiction, poetry, and drama.","brand":"Harvard University Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":50326918660370,"sku":"9780674062160","price":46.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0831\/4771\/8930\/files\/img_e4ec36b8-8f1d-4dd1-963d-b0eba348c60f.jpg?v=1727706886","url":"https:\/\/surprise-castle.myshopify.com\/products\/sonnets-and-shorter-poems-9780674062160","provider":"Surprise Castle","version":"1.0","type":"link"}