Festa, Nicola (ed.), Francesco Petrarca - L'Africa: edizione critica per cura di Nicola Festa (Firenze: Casa Editrice Le Lettere)
Text name(s): Africa; L'Africa
Number of pages of primary source text: 295
Author(s):
Dates: 1338 - 1343
Archival Reference:
Original Language(s):
- Latin
Translation:
- Original language included.
Translation Comments:
Geopolitical Region(s):
- Italy
- Tunisia
- Africa
County/Region: Rome
Record Types:
- Literature - Verse
Subject Headings:
- Classics / Humanism
- Literature - Epics Romance
Apparatus:
- Index
- Appendix
- Bibliography
- Facsimile
- Introduction
Comments:
In 1337 Petrarch first visited Rome. This visit had a profound impact, leaving him speechless but also inspired to take up literary pursuits equal to the grandeur he saw in the Rome that he visited. It should come as little surprise that in the following year he began writing an epic in Latin. Petrarch’s Africa recounts the leadership of Publius Cornelius Scipio Africanus (236-183 BCE) in the Second Punic War with a particular focus on the battle of Zama in 202 BCE. The epic concludes in book 9 with a triumphant Scipio returning to Rome.
Petrarch’s love of the classics and humanist spirit pervades through the text in a work that combines features of Livy’s history, Cicero’s philosophical writings and Virgil’s epic poetry. Even so, the literary quality of the Africa has been greatly criticized as dry, unpolished and second rate to other works by Petrarch and the works of those who preceded (e.g. Dante) and followed him (e.g. Renaissance writers). In this edition Bergin and Wilson set these criticisms aside, wishing to make more accessible literature that holds great potential for enriching perspectives on a writer of essential significance to both medieval and renaissance literary traditions.
Festa published this critical edition of the text in 1926 after scholarship had neglected Petrarch’s Africa for centuries. Since this time, this critical edition has been the authoritative source for assessing the textual stability of the Africa, which had become difficult for libraries and scholars to acquire until the publishing house Casa Editrice Le Lettere acquired the copyright and began reprinting. Festa produced this edition with the needs of advanced scholarship in mind. Even so, those who are new to the Africa will find this edition useful for answering questions of a textual nature and will appreciate the fold out manuscript facsimiles interspersed throughout the pages of the book. The index of personal names, more detailed than the index of Bergin and Wilson (reviewed on OMSB) may also prove useful.
Introduction Summary:
The introduction (64 pages, in Italian) to Festa’s critical edition thoroughly examines the manuscript tradition of the Africa.
Cataloger: BW
