17. Chaste Love and Unconsummated Romance
That chaste love and unconsummated romance formed the basis of Petrarch’s most celebrated work, the Italian poems Rime, divided into rimes during Laura’s life, and rimes after her death. Even before he penned Rime, Petrarch’s poetry had earned him considerable praise such that, in 1341, he became only the second poet laureate crowned since antiquity. He became known as the “first tourist” because he liked to travel for pleasure – which was highly unusual in his era. While on the road, he visited monastic libraries to collect manuscripts from antiquity, and was prominent in the recovery and propagation of knowledge from Greco-Roman writers. That became his scholarly life mission, which lasted until his death in 1374.
