HIST-308 Lecture Notes - Lecture 19: Mont Ventoux, Petrarch, Scholasticism
15 Mar 2020
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Document Summary
There is a shift from scholasticism to classicism. The heights of ancient thought and literature start to overtake the reverence for 13th century theologians like aquinas: the medieval petrarch. Even petrarch remained traditional in his intellectual outlook. He valued the classics over the products of late scholastic thought but he still read augustine atop mt. Giovanni boccaccio is the next great vernacular author: florence. Boccaccio came from a family of florentine merchants and would come to emblematize late medieval florentine culture. Understanding florence as the centre of humanism starts with boccaccio. His travelling merchant father had partially raised him in florence then sent him to naples to learn the family business. When he returned to florence, he was more of a literary auteur rather than a merchant. Taking his lead from dante, he wrote his early works about a maybe real, maybe fictional woman named fiammetta. While in florence, he continued to write increasingly widely-read masterpieces.
