By Edoardo Fumagalli,
University of Fribourg, Switzerland.
Renaissance Humanism – that is the avant-garde culture that
gave rise to and characterized the Renaissance – is to all intents and purposes
the brainchild of Petrarch (1304-74) and of Giovanni Boccaccio (1313-75), whose
700th anniversary is being celebrated this year. It is they above all who
brought about a new way of reading the works of others and writing one’s own,
using a method which in due course would impose itself throughout Europe.