Between tradition and innovation: the image of Florence in the urban literature of the Trecento

The paper examines the image of Florence in the three key works of Italian literature of the Тrecento: The Divine Comedy of Dante, The Canzoniere of Petrarch and The Decameron of Boccaccio. The method of analysis relies on a historical-genetic approach to the analysis of literary works. Semantic analysis of the descriptions of Florence in these works reveals a certain model of descriptions of the city. This model, developed in the classical Middle Ages, is based on the tradition of the opposition of the heavenly city of Jerusalem and its antithesis, the earthly and sinful Babylon. In the fourteenth century, it develops and includes images of the "good" and "bad" government, ideas about peace and justice as the initial positions of the common good. The idea of the common good becomes a kind of a "leitmotif" of the Italian social and political thought of the Trecento. The attitude to the common good distinguishes the "good" governor from the "bad" governor: the "good" governor acts on the basis of virtues, in accordance with the ideals of the common good, the power of the "bad" governor is based on defects, it tramples the common good. The socio-political ideas, expressing the complex transitional nature of the mentality of this era, are reflected in Italian city-state chronicles and in the iconography: in the famous frescoes by Ambrogio Lorenzetti's "The Good and Bad Government and their effects" in the Palazzo Pubblico of Siena. Lorenzetti's "good" governor represents the Republic, and the "bad" governor the Tyranny, but for him and for the authors of the Tuscan Chronicles of the 14th century, each of these forms of government (the Monarchy and the Republic) could be both good and bad. Identification and comparison of the images of Florence in Dante's poem, in Petrarch's verses and in Boccaccio's stories showed that their authors had the same socio-political views. It becomes apparent that, for all genre and stylistic differences of these works, essential for creating the images of Florence was a particular model of ideas about the city: a "good" city-state founded on the virtues is opposed to a "bad" city-state founded on sins and vices. It is interesting to note that in Dante's and Boccaccio's texts the Florence of the "present" is a "bad" city-state, while the Florence of the "past" is a city of "good" government. The study of the images of Florence in literary works allows to see the ideological content of the image of the city, and, at least in part, to answer the question of how the city was imagined.

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