Dante and Petrarch are two of the world's greatest love poets who convey
emotional, intellectual and religious life through the story of human
love. This book focuses on the attitudes of these two poets to sexual
desire and throws light on to their human love and the value given to
this love in the context of their Christian lives. Despite the contrasts
between them, Dante and Petrarch are often compared, for they write in a
common literary, classical and Christian tradition. It is generally
considered that Dante describes his human love experience as positive
and Petrarch views it as a negative emotion. It is the general argument
of this study that Dante and Petrarch, as well as leaving their own mark
on the tradition of love poetry, have insights into religion, which can
be characzterized by examining their attitudes to human love. The
discussion here is that of their faith, which is coloured by and
explored through human love.