The roles of glance in Petrarch’s Canzoniere Pillantások Petrarca Daloskönyvében

Abstract

Francesco Petrarch’s Canzoniere, which for centuries has determined European poetry and poetic language, still offers multiple readings to readers and researchers at the same time. This study – as a chapter of an articulated and detailed research on the language of gestures in literature and with the purpose of attracting attention to the subject – focuses with a series of quotes on the message of the eyes, on the signals sent and received by the glances, including the gestures conveyed in a narrative and sometimes iconic way by the verses of the Canzoniere. Considering the hierarchical relationship of the parts of the body, the eye – understood in this context as the most important part of the body next to the hand – is the mediator of perception, intellectual conception, and the signals of emotions. The presence of nonverbal communication in poetry, also due to its frequency, is an important method of analysis by emphasizing the rhetorical-poetic function of the language of gestures.