Abstract

This contribution puts forward a proposal for an amendment to Petrarch’s ‘Dispersa’ 53 (Var., 4), the autograph of which is preserved in MS Florence, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, LIII 35 (ff. 15r-v). An examination of the vocabulary shows how the letter is constructed of clever variations on texts from ancient and medieval literary sources, a knowledge of which helps us better to understand the message that it contains. Finally, the letter to Moggio is compared with some letters from the corpus of the ‘Familiares’ and with Sen., xvii 4.