Petrarch
Francesco Petrarca, Giovanni Boccaccio and their famous Tuscan predecessor Dante formed the modern Italian language that is spoken in Italy today. The power of their three careers coming one after the other created such a powerful linguistic model that all of Italy followed it even as various regions grumbled about the irritating Tuscans and their pride. The power of Petrarch's Italian resided in his collection of his own short poems, the sonnets, in the book called Il Canzoniere (The Big Songbook). Within the Canzoniere Petrarch gathered together poems he had been collecting for decades, beautiful small poems, almost all about love. The Canzoniere made Petrarch famous all over Europe. In France, Spain, Germany, Poland, England, Scotland, and Ireland, the example of Petrarch's poems created new schools of poets dedicated to the Sonnet. It all begins with Petrarch.
