Translucent spaces: Italy, Rome and Florence in the works of the Italian poetical "tre corone"
Both Dante and Petrarch dreamed of Italy as a unified cultural and political space where the poet gets a special role. Although each of them recognized the differences between the past and the present, the Italy of their imagination could merge with the Roman Empire, and cities important for their identity - Florence for Dante and Rome for Petrarch - could epitomize the Italian world as a whole. However, Dante's imperial ideal was universal and spiritually founded, while the Petrarch’s concept of the empire acquired nationalist overtones. The imperial dreams of both poets were not realized, but their successor, Giovanni Boccaccio, managed to lay the foundation for a unified Italian world as a space of common poetic culture.