Petrarch’s Transferable Communities: Open Deixis and Anonymous Addressees in the Fifteenth-Century Commentaries to the Rerum vulgarium fragmenta

Abstract

Petrarch’s (1304–74) lyric collection Rerum vulgarium fragmenta was the subject of numerous commentaries during the fifteenth century. Produced all over Italy, these commentaries represent a wide range of competing communities that harnessed Petrarch’s lyric in various ways, highlighting different aspects that were particularly relevant to the community they envisioned. Following the definition of open deixis as the fundamental linguistic element of lyric that enables its re-enactment, this article examines the fulfilment of Petrarch’s deixis of anonymous addressees in the series of sonnets RVF 24–26. As the comparison of the commentaries by Francesco Filelfo, Antonio Da Tempo, and Francesco Patrizi demonstrates, the commentators imagine Petrarch in exchange with different – and often historically impossible – fellow vernacular poets, Latin humanists, and political figures that represent a community enabled by the re-enactment of his poems without requiring a deep contextual knowledge of Petrarch’s oeuvre.