Abstract EN:

At the time of the urban rebirth of the medieval italy, the florentines had in mind an image of their own town which had been transmitted first by an ancient legend of its origins, but also by the first attemps of the local historiography. This image would theninform both a nascent poetry (dealing with political topics) and the great historical and literary works, and more particularly, villani's, dante's and boccaccio's. The rebirth of florence was based on the ashes of its ancient neighbour: fiesole. This rebirth involved the reinvention of a similar birth: the birth of a town whose future (in everyone's eyes) seemed -in a time of political troubles- to depend on a past that had to resemble what everybody hoped for its future. The roman and the etruscan origins of florence were actualized either in turn, or sometimes simultaneously. The strongest attachment of every citizen to his own town had to face its political fermenting which refused admittance to the opponents at the time. Dante, exile, expressed his helplessness by clashing with the dominant majority of florence, as far as the origins of the town were concerned. Boccaccio, whose biography split between naples and florence, built his most florentine works on the basis of an impossible repudiation.