Talk:Letter to Posterity
Reading through the Letter, as linked, I'm had trouble finding much of what this article claims actually in the letter. There was no mention of:
- Polybius
- theological studies
- parents' employment with Clement V
- parents' sojourn in Carpentras (this is probably an innocent misreading, since Petrarch does say he studied there in his youth, as I've reflected in my revision)
- the fact that he was the first modern laureate (this is the one I'm least certain of; please point me to the direct quotation from the letter if I've missed it in there)
- Petrarch's having written in Vulgar Latin, and, even more surprisingly, having announced the fact (Could this be a confused reference to something Petrarch said about his vernacular writings? Petrarch's contemporaries loved to find fault with the imperfection of his Latin in comparison to Latin models, but the criticism stung because it went to his literary ambitions, so I'd be surprised to see Petrarch himself giving fodder to it.)