Introspection In The Works Of Ovid, Petrarch

While today many think of literary works as being closely associated with the author who wrote them, literary works were not always the product of the authors experiences and imagination. The first literary works came from an explanatory oral tradition and were then later written down as they had been heard and passed down through generations. Since the Renaissance one of the many reasons an author has for writing any given work is to express his or herself and explore who they are as a person. While an increase in free time, access to literature and education are often cited as the main causes of this we can actually see the beginnings of self introspection in writing as early back as the writings of Virgil and Ovid. As literature transitioned
Petrarch learned from Virgil his introspection into characters and their use of dialogue to reveal inner struggles and connect. From Ovid, Petrarch learned a sense of fluidity and empathy, and from Dante, Petrarch used the ability to write about himself and how his own experiences shaped him. As summarized in the Norton’s Anthology: “Petrarch’s art; experience of love; and sense of his own fragmented, fluid, and metamorphic self set the standard for the lyric expression of subjective and erotic experience in the Renaissance,” (1599). Petrarch's works represent the segway into modern introspection because of how he took the tools of classical literature and transformed them into the tools of the renaissance. For example the notion of Virgilian sadness of the classical age Petrarch translated into the melancholy of the renaissance. In Petrarch’s first Sonnet he writes about himself and how he is ashamed of his youth, he describes in detail the “ways in which I weep and speak between vain hopes, between vain suffering,” (Norton’s 1602). This sadness at having been unable to live up to his duty is not a new concept however the fact that he is expressing it directly and talking about himself in his work
He wrote about being torn between spiritual and earthly attachments. In the end though it Petrarch has a more modern take on the dillehma because his love leads him not to salvation but to self discovery. As explained in Norton’s Anthology: “When Dante looks into Beatrice's eyes on Mount Purgatory, he sees a reflection of the heavens; when Petrarch gazes into Laura's eyes, he sees himself,” (1601). Petrarch was much more concerned with who he was as a person in his writing than earlier authors. While Virgil may have used Aeneas or Dido to show these feelings of alienation in Petrarch's works he was the one who felt a great loneliness and sorrow. The Norton Anthology describes Petrarch as having “Discovered a modern sense of alienation. He understood, too, that the dislocations of History affect cultural and individual identity. This awareness ties Petrarch’s thought and work to the aspects of the Renaissance that most anticipate modernity,”