The use of the term "literary history" as it appears in my title, and is frequently appealed to in my readings of Petrarch's Canzoniere and Trionfi , requires some explanation. I will neither be discussing Petrarch's reception -- "Petrarchism" in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century European lyric poetry, for example -- nor attempting to fit Petrarch into a scheme of historical periodiza- tion for which I have found him to be in some part responsible. Instead, the literary historical aspect of my subject involves the literary inter-relationship inscribed in the Petrarchan texts them- selves between a notion of the self and its history or story, and an understanding of language which raises problems concerning any and all narrative representations. What I come to address as a "Narcissistic structure" obtaining between subjects and predi- cates, selves and narratives, highlights the peculiarly non-narra- tive element which is always operative as well whenever Petrarch enacts the attempt to narrate a story or present a historical view. Petrarch's concept of history vis-à-vis a traditional medie- val historical understanding, which I describe as mutually in- verse images, suggests the priority that structural issues might take in our coming to terms with what appears to be a signifi- cant relative shift in the modes of reading and writing experi- ence, both historical and poetic.

The Petrarchan texts which I discuss locate themselves neither within nor outside of traditional medieval modes of self and narrative understanding, but rather insist upon the priority . . .