<i>Lo specchio di Petrarca (Rvf. son. 361)</i>

Abstract

The essay contains a reading of sonnet n. 361 of Petrarch’s Canzoniere. After a stylistic analysis the attention turns to the meaning of the poem deducing it from its position in the Canzoniere and from the image it contains, namely the mirror. In the mirror the poet sees materially his own old age, thus transforming into a visual reality what has being saying for the previous fifteen poems. Through this process Petrarch gives birth to a kind of symbolism which will prevail in the following centuries, a symbolism that transforms words into visual images.