De Remedis Utriusque Fortunae. This item is unavailable.De Remedis Utriusque Fortunae

Good clean copy in original boards, with remains of two metal clasps on front board. Lacks title page. Spine worn with top half-inch missing. Handwritten notes on inside front and back cover. De remediis utriusque fortunae addresses an encyclopedic range of subjects in prose: gambling to language, sore legs to music, happiness to ignobility, and a vast number of other topics. The volume offers a great tapestry of late medieval/early renaissance thought. The work was originally begun in 1354 and completed in October, 1366, and was published immediately after completion. It consists of two books containing 122 and 131 treatises, or discussions (dialogues) between Reason, Pleasure, and Hope and between Reason, Sorrow, and Fear which contain advice on how to attain good fortune as well as remedies for bad fortune. Francesco Petrarca (Petrarch) has been called the father of humanism, a founder of the Renaissance, the first modern historian, and even the first modern gardener since he is also celebrated for his experimental planting of trees. At fifteen, it is said that his father caught him reading classical literature instead of studying law and to punish the boy had all of his books burned except two, a text by Virgil and one by Cicero. The whole of Petrarch's subsequent career, both as a scholar and a poet, would serve as a triumphant rebuttal of that rash paternal act. Petrarch's personal library became the largest collection of classical literature in his day; he is said to have died holding a copy of Homer in his hands.…