L’écriture comme ascèse philosophique dans le De Vita Solitaria de Pétrarque

It has sometimes been argued that Petrarch’s De uita solitaria was a work of too much abundant, written with no real ordering principle. This is actually the first scholarly history of loneliness, a story in which Petrarch intended to show that the discipline of the writer working in active solitude can be as valuable as the asceticism of the saint in a contemplative solitude. It is also clearly a work belonging to what M. Foucault calls « writing of the self » and that we can and must rank among the practice of philosophical asceticism.

Petrarcae liber de uita solitaria opus copiosius, sine uera ordinationis ratione, esse interdum contentus est. Hic liber autem prima solitudinis historia docta est, qua Petrarca scriptoris exercitationem in solitudine actiua tanti esse posse quanti sancti exercitationem in solitudine contemplatiua ostendere uult. Praeterea hoc opus aperte ad « scriptionem sui », ut M. Foucault dicit, pertinet ac inter artes philosophicae exercitationis numerari potest debetque.