L’Italia di Dante e di Biondo Flavio: filologia geografica e toponomastica mediolatina

The essay examines the idea of Italy between the Middle Ages and Renaissance Humanism, focusing on the descriptions of the peninsula in Dante’s De vulgari eloquentia and in Biondo Flavio’s Italia illustrata. The first part reconstructs the evolution in the use of the terms regio and provincia to denote the territorial division of Italy, showing how the concept of “province”, predominant in the Middle Ages, was progressively replaced by that of “region” between the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Dante’s linguistic geography and Biondo’s historical geography mark a break with the medieval chorographic tradition and introduce a new conception of Italian space, which is also analysed through comparison with the principal descriptions of Italy before and after the two authors. This turning point represents a decisive moment in the revival of humanistic chorography and in the formation of a new Italian regionalism founded on continuity with classical antiquity and on the legacy of Latin civilisation. In the second part of the essay this perspective is further explored through an examination of the variety of names applied to Italy and of the medieval and humanistic toponymy of its regions and cities, tracing the development of selected choronyms and poleonyms in both retrospective and prospective diachronic perspective, from Dante to the geographers of Renaissance Humanism.