The early modern and modern cultural world in the West would be unthinkable without Petrarch
and Boccaccio. Despite this fact there is still no scholarly contribution entirely devoted to
analysing their intellectual revolution. Internationally renowned scholars are invited to
discuss and rethink the historical intellectual and literary roles of Petrarch and Boccaccio
between the great model of Dante's encyclopedia and the ideas of a double or multifaceted
culture in the era of Italian Renaissance Humanism. In his lyrical poems and Latin treatises
Petrarch created a cultural pattern that was both Christian and Classical exercising immense
influence on the Western World in the centuries to come. Boccaccio translated this pattern into
his own vernacular narratives and erudite works ultimately claiming as his own achievement the
reconstructed unity of the Ancient Greek and Latin world in his contemporary age. The volume
reconsiders Petrarch's and Boccaccio's heritages from different perspectives (philosophy
theology history philology paleography literature theory) and investigates how these
heritages shaped the cultural transition between the end of the Middle Ages and the early
modern era as well as European identity.
