“The European Renaissance, let us say, began on Easter Sunday, 8 April 1341”. We are likely to find few more confident statements at the head of any other work noticed in Reference Reviews. This one at least is then justified, as the day on which Petrarch received a crown of laurel on the Capitoline Hill in Rome and in his speech in reply effectively stated a manifesto for the revival and study of ancient classical learning and literature. As the most celebrated scholar and poet of his time, the effective founder of Humanism was not only courted throughout Europe but was to have a widespread influence on subsequent Renaissance literature and thought across the continent.
Combining thorough scholarship with the possibilities offered by the computer, this book seeks to chart the depth and breadth of that influence throughout the English‐speaking world from the first appearance of a reference to him in print in 1475 up to 1700. In addition, obviously, to references in English in works printed in the British Isles, it includes “works in English printed on the Continent and elsewhere and foreign‐language works printed in England and Scotland”. Given the nature of the works thus examined, this has involved considerable work in the major library collections of Great Britain and the USA.
The results are formidable. 1,580 entries are arranged chronologically. In each case the bibliographic reference is followed by full quotation of the relevant part of the text: thus, the first entry, for Chaucer's Prologue of the Clerke of Oxenford from the Canterbury Tales a brief bibliographic citation to STC 5082 is followed by thirty‐one lines of the text and another seven from the end of the tale. Further editions of Chaucer are listed subsequently in the chronological catalogue. The second text entry is for 1494 to John Lydgate's translation of Boccaccio's The Falle of Princis, with 21 lines of text. Both these, and all subsequent texts up to 1581 (Thomas Howell's Howell His Devises, for His Owne Exercise and His Friends Pleasure) are printed in black letter type. Subsequent entries continue to represent the original typefaces, mostly thereafter Roman but some still in black letter and others in italic. The final text entry is with the penultimate reference, Diego de Saavedra Fajardo The Royal Politician Represented In One Hundred Emblems of 1700. Texts in foreign languages (usually Latin) are quoted in the original and also translated. There are brief explanatory notes to some authors or works, remarking on their relevance in this present context.
Acknowledgments, Methodology and a ten‐page Introduction preface the catalogue; it is completed by a bibliography (of secondary sources), an index of references to the original works of Petrarch quoted, and a general index.
This is an excellent scholarly resource, the result of considerable investigation and transcription. Since a hundred years separate the active life of Petrarch from the first printed reference, some indication at least of intervening manuscript references to his works would have been invaluable, although at probably impossible costs in labour and time for the compilers. As it is, the work offers a fascinating insight into the English Renaissance: Shakespeare knew his work as did apparently many other Elizabethan writers. How Petrarch was quoted in the Commonwealth period, by Milton and others also bears interesting study. Perhaps this is not quite simply the specialist scholarly reference work it seems at first look and as is suggested by its price, but could also bear a wider interest.
