The cultural code of the italian city in D. Brown’s novel "Inferno"

The article based on D. Brown’s novel "Inferno" examines the problem of the Italian cultural code related to the topos of Florence and Venice cities. The process of creating the urban text is traced, its constituent elements are determined, which represent significant historical and cultural values and create the originality and uniqueness of the cultural code of each city. The genre specificity of Brown’s work as a novel – a tourist guide is determined, in which the urban cultural text (Florentine, Venetian) is presented as a kind of name-dropping, stringing together the names of notable cultural sights and the names of prominent citizens. Landscape, genetic, material-cultural and spiritual-cultural elements are distinguished in the process of researching the cultural code of each city. The time-space code of Florence is associated with the period of the late Middle Ages and the Renaissance. Characteristic elements of the conceptosphere of the Florentine myth are singled out in the description of the urban topos: motifs of the stone, the garden, the tower, and time. The spiritual sphere includes urban legends, historical legends, personal myths, among which Dante Alighieri occupies a prominent place. The gastronomic code, representing the names of Italian cuisine dishes as the result of a separate nation’s accumulation of material experience, is considered separately. It is noted in the study of the Venetian cultural code, that Brown’s novel uses the "signatures of the city" (T. Tsyvian) of the world Venetian: water, firmament, toponyms, architectural structures, characters, historical and cultural realities. The topos of the city is related to the Middle Ages: the rule of the Doges, the influence of Byzantine culture, which affected the eclecticism of architectural structures. The spiritual sphere is represented by elements of hagiography, Christian symbols that represent the Venetian identity.