Francesco Petrarca

Only in Avignon, unofficial capital of 14th century Europe and historical way-station between ancient Rome and modern Paris, could Francesco Petrarca become a singular figure at the threshold of a new epoch. Unlike Dante, whose worldview still bears the traces of a vertical, metaphysical order, Petrarch's world is determined by diversity and horizontalism. Karlheinz Stierle presents Petrarch not only as a writer but also as a political being and one of the first pioneers of modernism.