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IMC 2007: Sessions

Session 221: Perceptions of Florence, I: Florence - Earthly and Ideal City

Monday 9 July 2007, 14.15-15.45

Organiser:Darragh Greene, Trinity College Dublin
Moderator/Chair:Darragh Greene, Trinity College Dublin
Paper 221-aDante and Florence: Civic Pride, Exile, and Nostalgia
(Language: English)
Darragh Greene, Trinity College Dublin
Index terms: Language and Literature - Italian, Philosophy, Political Thought
Paper 221-bChaucer and Florence Revisited
(Language: English)
Anne Marie D'Arcy, Department of English, University of Leicester
Index terms: Art History - Sculpture, Language and Literature - Middle English
Paper 221-cBruni's Isocrates: Greek Rhetoric in the Laudatio Urbis Florentinae
(Language: English)
Clare Guest, Department of Italian, Trinity College Dublin
Index terms: Language and Literature - Latin, Learning (The Classical Inheritance), Rhetoric
Abstract

This session considers various aspects of civic representations of Florence. It includes Italian and English material, and it stretches from Dante to the early 15th century. The movement from historical prototypes of the earthly city through allegory to a transcendent urban ideal will be explored by means of a collage of literary exemplars. The session charts a movement from Dante through Chaucer's encounter with John Hawkwood ending in the question of the Humanist Bruni's use of Greek rhetoric and Sophistic works in fashioning a representation of Florence.