The third chapter traces how Petrarch imagines the place of the poet in the period between 1341 and 1353. It begins with Petrarch’s coronation oration as poet laureate of Rome, which has long been recognized as representing the poet’s status in an oscillating temporality between past and present. It argues that this tension in Petrarch’s self-representation is related to his ambiguous stance about appertaining to a city or being situated beyond it. In readings of the coronation oration, the letters surrounding the revolution of Cola di Rienzo, and his major texts on poetry, the chapter shows how Petrarch increasingly distances himself from association with urban environments as places of the masses, even as he becomes more directly involved in politics. With an ideal Rome as his city, he can claim a status that is above and beyond the vulgar concerns of the people of the city. Petrarch’s political language of vituperation against the people coincides with the language of his rejection of the vernacular. After a close reading of the poetics of place in Familiares 10.4 and the related Parthenias, the chapter concludes with an analysis of the defense of poetry in the Invective contra medicum.

The introduction situates the book’s argument within scholarly debates on poetic authority in the late Middle Ages and especially in fourteenth-century Italy. It frames the book’s narrative by inviting readers to think historically about the role of poets and poetry in the public sphere. By understanding in its historical context how poet-scholars first argued for their own relevance centuries ago, we may better conceive new roles for literature in the changing landscape of public discourse. While an etiology of the figure of the public intellectual or an archaeology of the public humanities are goals beyond the scope of this book, its argument supports and contributes to debates on these topics.

A part of this book’s story shows how four poets sought to create an institution of poetry because other paths to recognition and power in the civic space were blocked to them. The defense of poetry and laurel crowning were modes of political empowerment. By the end of the fourteenth century, with the increasing bureaucratization of cities like Florence, the intellectuals who take up the cause of poetry no longer do so to defend their own role in society. The authority of the poet is reabsorbed by the authors of the works read by these functionaries, who shared a similar training in grammar, rhetoric, and law with these poets, but whose effective authority in the city required no defending. As a concluding example, the epilogue examines the first defense of poetry of Florentine Chancellor Coluccio Salutati (1331–1406), which takes place in a series of private letters written to Bolognese Chancellor Giuliano Zonarini in 1378–79. It suggests that the previous poets’ concern for situating themselves vis-à-vis political power is translated into a role for poetry itself.

The fourth chapter shows how Boccaccio manipulates the Petrarchan model of the poet for different ends. It is prefaced by a reassessment of the relationship between Boccaccio and Petrarch, focusing on the political differences between the two poets. In an analysis of the initial years of their friendship, the chapter shows how Boccaccio moves from seeing Petrarch’s presence in Florence as the condition for the repatriation of Dante’s poem, to trying to separate the two poets from one another in his first redaction of the Vita di Dante. After establishing the fundamental political and cultural differences between the two poets, the chapter moves to an analysis of Boccaccio’s defense of poetry in Book 14 of the Genealogie Deorum Gentilium Libri, which has traditionally been understood as a reiteration of Petrarch’s ideas. It argues that Boccaccio undermines and at times reverses the terms of Petrarch’s notion of the poet’s relationship to the city, which also has implications for the value of vernacular poetry. Throughout, the chapter indicates how Boccaccio’s Decameron and vernacular poetry are often in the background of his defense. It concludes with the suggestion that Boccaccio obliquely claims for himself the role of the poet for the city.