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ONLINE LATIN LANGUAGE AUDIO COURSE
"Francesco Petrarca would have been surprised at how it all turned out. In the end he acquired--as he had hoped--a fame that far outlived his time. But it happened not at all in the way he expected. The great scholar-poet (1304-1374) was already, it is true, famous in his own day as a writer of passionate love lyrics in Italian. There were few educated Italians of the fourteenth century who did not know his Canzoniere (Book of Songs). Yet Petrarch himself believed that the fame he had won from his intricately wrought sonnets and canzoni could not long survive. The private title he gave his Canzoniere--significantly, a Latin title--was Rerum Vulgarium Fragmenta, which means something like "Bits of Stuff in the Vulgar Tongue." This rather dismissive title shows, in effect, what Petrarch the Latin author thought of Petrarch the volgare poet. Petrarch the Latin author never dreamed that the canonical status he would one day enjoy would come not from his Latin epic, the Africa, or from his numerous other Latin writings, but from those little "bits of stuff." True, universal, eternal fame, he was sure, could come only from works written in the eternal tongue of the ancient Romans. That is why the greatest Italian poet of his time spent the better part of his career writing in a language that, today, hardly anyone reads." (i Tatti Library)

So, get on with your Latin studies, a whole universe of magnificent Literature awaits you!