Download or read book Authorizing Petrarch written by William John Kennedy and published by . This book was released on 1994 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Kennedy chronicles the process of Petrarch's canonization from the interpretive commentaries found in rare fifteenth- and sixteenth-century editions of Rime sparse through the imitative poetry of early modern writers in Italy, France, and England. The commentaries--each employing a different Petrarch to promote a different ideological paradigm--take a wide range of approaches to important contemporaneous issues relating to politics, class, religion, love, and gender relationships.