Petrarch's Epistolary Ego and the Authorizing Maternal

that had lain forgotten for half a century: a codex containing the epistolary collections of Marcus Tullius Cicero.1 Petrarch spent weeks copying the text; five years later, he began to arrange his own letters, assembling by the end of his life four collections containing more than five hundred epistles.2 Taken as a whole, the extensive epistolary presents an idealized intellectual autobiogra phy.3 As the poet tells and retells his own narrative, he sculpts the carefully crafted image he bequeaths to posterity.4 Epistolae famili ares 1:1—the dedication to Petrarch's earliest single collection of letters—provides the keynote to his entire epistolary.5 Here, the hu manist reveals his anxiety about the fate of his fame, displaying his attention to crafting the self and to manipulating the reaction of the