Renaissance Individualism Revisited: Petrarch, Boccaccio, and the Emergence of the Humanist Relational Self

This chapter revisits the question of Renaissance individualism by focusing on the writings of two early propagators of the Italian Renaissance: Petrarch and Boccaccio. Through an analysis of their literary dialogues with central medieval authorities and institutions, it argues that both authors develop a highly personal, earthbound conception of a relational self. In their engagements with figures such as Augustine (for Petrarch) and Dante (for Boccaccio), they challenge traditional structures of order and meaning, questioning their relevance to contemporary experience and thereby opening a space for an individualism that may be described as “modern.” The chapter also demonstrates that these dialogues are not purely agonistic or triumphant, but reveal the costs and contradictions of this emerging individualism – whether in its lack of metaphysical grounding or its destabilizing effects on the social fabric. Rather than simply discarding old authorities, Petrarch and Boccaccio’s representations of the self often seek to reconcile the old with the new, individualism with tradition, and self with others, anticipating Charles Taylor’s emphasis on the relational nature of the self.