The French Petrarch‪.‬

The story-making in Petrarch's Rime sparse, giving rise to numerous commentaries and to biographical annotations in editions of his lyric collection, was central to the reception of the Rime in France. It made its mark on cultural politics in the sixteenth century in the "naturalization" of Petrarch in the Vaucluse as a poet of France, and on the Renaissance French lyric in the manner in which a number of poets adopted and adapted his canzoniere as dominant lyric model. Its central role is well illustrated in the self-conscious shaping of the poetic career of France's greatest poet of the century, Pierre de Ronsard, who aspired to the title of "French Petrarch." **********