Petrarca je bil eden najpomembnejših italijanskih književnikov 14. stoletja. Njegovo najbolj znano delo je Canzoniere.
Petrarkovo ponovno odkritje Cicerovih pisem je pogosto pripisano začetku italijanske renesanse iz 14. stoletja in ustanovitvi renesančnega humanizma.[5] V 16. stoletju je Pietro Bembo ustvaril model za sodobni italijanski jezik na podlagi Petrarkovih del, pa tudi del Giovannija Boccaccia in v manjši meri Danteja Alighierija.[6] Petrarka je kasneje kot model italijanskega sloga potrdila Accademia della Crusca.
Petrarkove sonete so v času renesanse občudovali in posnemali po vsej Evropi in so postali vzor za lirično poezijo. Znan je tudi po tem, da je prvi razvil koncept temne dobe[7]], ki se zdi večini sodobnih znanstvenikov zavajajoča in netočna.[8][9][10]
↑This designation appears, for instance, in a recent reviewArhivirano 2012-10-25 na Wayback Machine. of Carol Quillen's Rereading the Renaissance.
↑In the Prose della volgar lingua, Bembo proposes Petrarch and Boccaccio as models of Italian style, while expressing reservations about emulating Dante's usage.
↑Renaissance or Prenaissance, Journal of the History of Ideas, Vol. 4, No. 1. (Jan. 1943), pp. 69–74; Theodor Ernst Mommsen, "Petrarch's Conception of the 'Dark Ages'" Speculum17.2 (April 1942: 226–242); JSTOR link to a collection of several letters in the same issue.
↑Snyder, Christopher A. (1998). An Age of Tyrants: Britain and the Britons A.D. 400–600. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press. str. xiii–xiv. ISBN0-271-01780-5.. In explaining his approach to writing the work, Snyder refers to the "so-called Dark Ages", noting that "Historians and archaeologists have never liked the label Dark Ages ... there are numerous indicators that these centuries were neither 'dark' nor 'barbarous' in comparison with other eras."
↑Verdun, Kathleen (2004). »Medievalism«. V Jordan, Chester William (ur.). Dictionary of the Middle Ages. Zv. Supplement 1. Charles Scribner. str. 389–397.; Same volume, Paul Freedman, "Medieval Studies", pp. 383–389.
↑Raico, Ralph. »The European Miracle«. Arhivirano iz prvotnega spletišča dne 3. septembra 2011. Pridobljeno 14. avgusta 2011. "The stereotype of the Middle Ages as 'the Dark Ages' fostered by Renaissance humanists and Enlightenment philosophes has, of course, long since been abandoned by scholars."