Write a paper describing the role of the poetics in Petrarch's love sonnets. Describe whether you believe that Petrarch refutes the notion of skepticism with his ability to use the arguments of the stoics against them regarding stoic determinism. Does his refutation of his fears with notions of hope justify the validity of his eternal love. Describe how immutable absolute truth in beauty and nature shown through his poetics describing Laura help him to transcend the transitory nature of time and arrive at absolute and universal truths through ethereal imagery. Describe his balance of the ethereal and eternal with the rational mind based on his deeply reflective contemplations of his life as he uses Laura to transcend time and space to defy the fears he conjures from his reflections on the transitory nature of life. Or write a paper that describes how Petrarch is a skeptic except for mere religious belief in his love for Laura as he wavers between fear and hope throughout the poems. Does his fears overpower his hopes and lend to future skeptical philosophies found later in the Enlightenment. Take a stance on how you interpret his poems. You can also write about Shakespeare's immutable themes of beauty, nature, and the eternal nature of time, despite the transitory nature of life. You can write for his use of absolute truths through these ideals, or argue that he, like Petrarch, presents skepticism in his poems.
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