Petrarch's Accidia
Siegfried Wenzel
Whenever Petrarch's significance for the history of European thought and sentiment is assessed, a great deal attention given to his ‘melancholy'. Apart from poetry it Secretum which presents most clearly this aspect inner life. In work Petrarch analyzed under name accidia. Literary critics since Sainte-Beuve have seen behind concept same psychic malady that beset Werther or René and, more recently, Baudelaire. Scholars, on other hand, tried locate accidia in less linear development acedia, medieval sin spiritual negligence, modern melancholy, Weltschmerz, ennui.
Studies in the Renaissance