L'ascension du mont Ventoux de Pétrarque, allégorie d'une humanité en quête d'élévation

Résumé

In several writings, Petrarch (1304–1374) represents life as a journey, and himself as a traveler, viator or ubique peregrinus: one who travels the whole world. The Ascent of Mont Ventoux is one on these texts that set up deep structures of humanist thought, both formally and philosophically. The journey is double, if not triple, and constantly linked to Petrarch’s desire to become a man of the high peaks. The writing figures a spiritual ascent, allegorically; it represents the effort of a soul that experiences the mystery of God on the ridges of Ventoux. The semiotic approach shows that what the character of Petrarch undertakes, in the description of his climbing body, is a somatic transposition of the path of a soul in search of spiritual altitude. The human dimensions (body and spiritual soul) are synchronized in this epistolary fiction to reveal the process of self-elevation.