Petrarch's Remedies for Fortune Fair and Foul [5 volumes]

Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991. 1st Edition. Hardcover. Fine/No Jacket. 8vo. A Modern English Translation of De remediis utriusque Fortune, with a Commentary. Five volumes. Full grey cloth, red labels to spines and front boards, gold lettering and panel decorations. B&W illustrations and maps in-text throughout. Book I: Remedies for Prosperity. Volume 1 - Translation: xxviii, 324 pp. Volume 2 - Commentary: lxvi, 425 pp. Book II: Remedies for Adversity. Volume 3 - Translation: xviii, 338 pp. Volume 4 - Commentary: ix, 532 pp. Volume 5 - References: Bibliography, Indexes, Tables, and Maps: viii, 563, [5]. Light rubbing and bumping to spine ends and corners of all volumes, some rubbing to tail edges. Interior is bright, clean, and free of annotation. Francesco Petrarca (1304-1374) was an Italian Renaissance humanist poet and scholar. De remediis utriusque Fortune is a collection of Latin dialogues dealing with early Renaissance humanistic moral philosophy, a sort of fourteenth century "self-help" volume with musings on how thoughts and actions can impact our fortunes. "The dialogues are long, quaint and demanding, cantankerous, arrogantly self-assured, sententious, full of old lore and views, obscure, puzzling, occasionally infuriating, and flagrantly out-of-date as far as present day knowledge and sentiment are concerned. One way of reacting to such a text, as Petrarch would have been quick to point out, is not to read the book. Another, to pause, to ponder what made so many generations value the work and read it avidly, and to suspend judgment--to read for information, for the warp and woof of another epoch, its ideas, concerns, hopes, and fears. Petrarch's intensely personal book is written for an age far removed from ours; yet it addresses resolutely human predicaments, strains, and anxieties not unlike those of our times." (from 'To the Modern Reader' at the start of Volume 1).