Petrarch's Ascent of Mount Ventoux. The Familiaris

Acknowledgements and Author's note; Introduction; Letter-writing before Petrarch (Tradition; Renovatio: Re-enter Cicero); Cicero versus Seneca; Why 24 books? why this structure?; The Ventoux letter as literary fiction: an outline, its addressee, its models, and Gherardo (Outline of the climb; The addressee: Dionigi da Borgo Sansepolcro; The literary models: explicit and implicit; Gherardo); Romanitas (First attempt: Philip V of Macedon; Second attempt: Ovid of Tomis; Third attempt: Hannibal of Carthage); The unfinished Augustinian paradigm; A Franciscan completion (I: The sortes Apostolorum; II: The Franciscan Oracle); Fate; The manuscript tradition; Abbreviations and Editions; Text and Translation; Ventoux Commentary; Critical Bibliography. Appendix. The stigmatisation of St Francis in the Legenda maior by St Bonaventure. Index names and places cited.