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From: Hud Reynolds
Date: 9/10/2003
Time: 2:40:15 PM
Remote Name: 199.44.215.199
The emotional iconography of late middle ages centered on the Cult of the Virgin Mary. Petrarch establishes his own intensely personal religious cult, the worship of Laura, with its idiosyncratic ritual sighing and weeping and poetic daydreaming, inviting other sensitive souls to do likewise. I wonder to what extent his long struggle to reclaim possession of his soul, after its traumatic engagment with this idealized form of beauty, is part of his overall scheme of personal liberation from all form of external authority?