A Petrarchan source of Tirant lo Blanc
The letter FamiliareXII 2 and its Catalan tradition
Chapter cxliii of the Catalan novel Tirant lo Blanc relates to Abdallah Salomon’s didactic speech to the protagonist, Tirant. It is a faithful adaptation of the Latin letter Fam. xii 2 written by Petrarch in 1352 and sent by him from Avignon to Niccolò Acciaiuoli. The letter was first translated into Catalan at the beginning of the 15th century. Two different, independent copies of the original translation are preserved in Madrid (Biblioteca Nacional, ms. 7811) and Barcelona (Biblioteca de Catalunya, ms. 6). This essay will try to determine how the original Latin letter could have arrived in Catalonia and will draw attention to some significant variations between its critical text and the three Catalan versions, trying to identify which witness of the Petrarchan Rerum familiarium libri could have been the base for the translation.