Marian Literary Culture: Petrarch and the Rapprochement of Cultures

The history of the English reception of Petrarch’s works is one that has been told without reference to the reign of Queen Mary. This is despite the fact that a history of Marian literary culture cannot be told without reference to Petrarch. Indeed, the English Petrarch had a distinctively Marian phase that manifested itself in three works, two in print and one in manuscript. These are: Tottel’s Miscellany, Henry Parker, Lord Morley’s Tryumphes, and William Forrest’s The Seconde Grisilde. All three appearing during Queen Mary’s short reign, and as products of a particular moment, these works point to a specific idea of Marian literary culture that sought to deliver Petrarch from a less worthy Henrician age. Henry VIII’s sexual and political excesses were sharply criticised at this time, and the moralizing and philosophising Petrarch assumed fresh importance as a model for this critique. Petrarch’s example was therefore also central to a broader cultural renaissance that was both Marian and Catholic, and that helped to establish in poetry what the Marian return to Rome established in politics and religion: a rapprochement of cultures. [O.W.]