Petrarca e as metáforas animais como recurso vexatório

Abstract

Petrarch often employs a wide range of animal metaphors aiming to denigrate his opponent throughout the four books of his Invective contra medicum. The work was written between 1352 and 1355 and is addressed to an anonymous physician of the ailing Pope Clement VI. According to the poet, it consists in a response to a violent attack made by that physician who apparently has felt offended by some statements written by Petrarch in a brief epistle sent to the Pope.  By criticizing dialectic these invectives  offers a straightforward attack against the “mechanical” art of medicine that discloses a broader battle waged against a large number of intellectuals gathered by the  poet in the group of magistri artium from the most renowned scholastic centers at that time.