1. Francesco Petrarch Italian Poet

2. Francesco Petrarch Francesco Petrarch (1304-74) was responsible for establishing certain ideas about love-relationships. He wrote more than 300 sonnets (poems) addressed to an idealized lady named Laura, with whom he had never even had a conversation. These sonnets were enormously popular, and poets in Shakespeare's day were still using Petrarch's sonnets as models. One key Petrarchan notion is that the lover's love for a beautiful woman is not returned and he suffers as if from a bad flu (freezes and burns).

3. Question: Can you think of any movies/songs/stories where the hero is in love with a girl who doesn’t know he exists?

4. One more thing about Petrarch… Petrarch, along with other poets, often referred to love in terms of religion. This convention is still around as well. Can you think of any ways in which people in love still talk this way?