Explication of Petrarch’s Sonnet 132

Explication of Petrarch’s Sonnet 132

Francesco Petrarch, popularly referred to as Petrarch (1304-1374), is generally

considered alongside Boccaccio and Dante, as the father of humanism in Western part of

Europe. Petrarch was responsible for the bringing to light of many of the works belonging

to classic poets, orators of ancient Rome and historians. Petrarch was also an outstanding

poet in his own right. Sonnet 132 refers to a witty inversion of the convention, in that the

images we are familiar with, are still in existence- heart/eye, Venus, Sunrise in the evening

sky (Jones, 1995). Sonnets 132 again appears to illustrate a spam of emotional distress which

the poet experienced in the summer of 1343 when, tossed in a fragile boat between his two

loves, he was clearly contemplating a break with Francesca’s mother. Even so, he knew full

well that Laura’s response to any reconciliatory approach he might be tempted to make would

be limited to a dismissive irony, precisely because of the enormity of his recent infidelity.

The poem therefore seems to be the first examples of pure distress in the cycle. Its impact is

reinforced by 133 and 134 which express the same type of warring, ambivalent passions in

It is indeed interesting to find the continuing presence of rhetorical figures such as the

oxymoron and antithesis in the poet’s keener moments of distress here. Francesco Petrarch's

Sonnet 132 is made up of 6 hendecasyllables, whereby...