Marjorie Boyle is the first theologian to write about Petrarch the poet as theologian. With her extraordinarily broad and deep knowledge of the theological, historical, and literary contexts of her subject, she presents an entirely original and revisionary account of Petrarch's literary career.

Petrarch, she argues, has been misunderstood by the division of his literary enterprise into two sides--Petrarch the poet, Petrarch the humanist reformer--studied by literary critics and historians respectively. Boyle demonstrates that the division is artificial, that the two sides are part of the...