'Ad modum floris': Petrarch's Narcissus between the Rerum vulgarium fragmenta and Triumphi

Abstract

ABSTRACT: This article analyses Petrarch's treatment of Narcissus in his vernacular poetry, focusing on his inclusion of an aspect of the myth not usually found in medieval vernacular rewritings of Ovid's Metamorphoses : the flower which seals Narcissus's metamorphosis. Setting Petrarch's flower-Narcissus in dialogue with passages from the anonymous fourteenth-century Ovide moralisé demonstrates the poet's distinctive treatment of the myth relative to his lyric and romance precursors even as he preserves its significance for dramatizing the ambivalent pleasures of erōs . Desiring 'in the manner of the flower' affects lover and beloved alike, with implications for how we read vegetal metamorphosis in Petrarch.