The Figure of the Reader in Petrarch'sSecretum

Abstract

Critics of Renaissance literature have recently claimed that the active role of the reader in the production of meaning is only recognized in the sixteenth century. While numerous counterexamples can be found in classical and medieval literature, this essay focuses on the active role of the fictional reader in Petrarch'sSecretumin order to demonstrate the limited applicability of such a claim to the early Renaissance. While critics have interpreted the exchange between Augustinus and Franciscus as the dramatic representation of Petrarch's divided will, they have failed to note that this dividedness is conveyed as well by the intertextuality of the work. In his willful misreading of Augustine'sConfessions, in his allusions to his own earlier letter on the ascent of Mont Ventoux, as well as in his use and abuse of citations and moral exempla, Petrarch dramatizes his conception of the will itself as a faculty of interpretation.

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