For teachers and students of Petrarch, Robert M. Durling’s edition of the poems has become the standard one. Readers have praised the translation as both graceful and accurate, conveying a real understanding of what this difficult poet is saying.
The literalness of the prose translation makes this beautiful book especially useful to students who lack a full command of Italian. And students reading the verse in the original will find here an authoritative text.
Robert M. Durling is Professor of Italian and English Literature at the University of California at Santa Cruz. He is the author of "The Figure of the Poet in Renaissance Epic" and translator of "Petrarch's Lyric Poems". Ronald L. Martinez is Associate Professor of Italian at the University of Minnesota and the author of numerous articles on Dante, Boccaccio, and Machiavelli.