The essay recognizes the production in Italian of Louise Labé (in limine her 24 French sonnets) and Pernette du Guillet (the two octaves Rymes) as a poetic micro manifesto. It is lyric that shows with extreme competence its sources – Petrarch but also Serafino Aquilano Leon Ebreo to introduce reflection on poetry ‘dame’ cultural implications, not least those an editorial policy sensitive femini...

In one of his Letters of Old Age from 1367–68, Petrarch observed that while travel added something to his experience and knowledge of things, it had diminished his knowledge of literature by keeping him away from his study. Indeed, neither hardships at sea nor perils would have kept him from traveling even “to the ends of the earth, to China and the Indies, and . . . the most distant land of Ta...