The treatise Phisicke Against Fortune by poet and humanist Petrarch (1304—1374) now began to be revealed as a multilevel, metaphorical, structurally «complex» text. One of its not very famous dialogues, De minutis taediis rerum variarum (On Different Minor Troubles), allows important components of Petrarch’s method to be drawn in the context of the entire writing. Heroes of his dialogues — Grief and Mind do not succumb to unambiguous social-status «identification»; The first character is filled by signs of a collective image towards the end of the conversation; Mind is an intellectual, his judgments about nature, the place of man in it and in the world possess a pronounced Renaissance-humanistic novelty. As a rule, Grief briefly denotes the topics of conversation, Mind unfolds and develops them from something having daily occurrence to the space of a large picture of the world, high aesthetics, philosophical thinking of life. His argument is diverse: personal experience, examples from the lives of famous people, cultural information with a clear preference given to the ancient Roman side. It shows that the author does not discover the truth every time in a dispute with himself or some opponent, but sets out his vision of the problem, his views and recommendations.
Key words: Petrarch (1304—1374), «Phisicke Against Fortune», dialogue «De minutis taediis rerum variarum» (II, 90), roles of characters, Petrarch’s creative
method, early Renaissance humanism, nature theme, picture of the world.
Reference to article:
Devyataykina N. I. Creative method of humanist Petrarch (On the material of the “Phisicke against fortune treatise”) // Ivanovo State University Bulletin. Series «The Humanities». 2020. No.2. P. 39-47.