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Theodore Cachy will give a talk on "Mapping Italy in Dante, Petrarch and Boccaccio." This event is sponsored by the Group for Pre-modern Cultural Studies and the Penn Warren Center in conjunction with the Department of French and Italian.

Awareness of a common civil and cultural identity was among “Italians” rooted not only in the memory of an ancient cultural heritage but also in a shared perception of the characteristic geo- morphological identity of the peninsula. Father Dante was the first to recognize the key role that the map of Italy needed to play if any kind of Italian cultural unity were to be achieved. Dante, Petrarch and Boccaccio each made canonical contributions to the cartographic invention of Italy in their writings.

His talk is titled "Mapping Italy in Dante, Petrarch and Boccaccio." Awareness of a common civil and cultural identity was among “Italians” rooted not only in the memory of an ancient cultural heritage but also in a shared perception of the characteristic geo-morphological identity of the peninsula.  Father Dante was the first to recognize the key role that the map of Italy needed to play if any kind of Italian cultural unity were to be achieved. Dante, Petrarch and Boccaccio each made canonical contributions to the cartographic invention of Italy in their writings.