Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 79-11(E), Section: A.

Adviser: Giuseppe Mazzotta.

This dissertation examines the use of urban design within the context of literature in Renaissance Florence, and what said design can tell about each author's view of the city. By examining the literary, political, and spatial implications of what portions of Florence each author describes new light may be shed on Florence's role in the public imagination and each author's conception of what a city---any city---might be and contain.

To achieve an adequate study of this vast topic (for what is civilization itself if not a series of cities?), this dissertation is organized into two distinct parts: the first provides a historical and theoretical background to the study of Florence and utopian thought as a whole, and the second part puts these ideas to the test via three authors: Giovanni Boccaccio, Leonardo Bruni, and Niccolo Machiavelli. The first chapter examines the phenomena of utopias and the role of the architect/architecture in the city, drawing on the philosophical traditions that influenced Florentine minds in the Renaissance, and also examining a few architectural treatises contemporary to the rise of Florence in the Renaissance. The second chapter deconstructs and re-synthesizes a variety of theories of space and city, focusing on the individual elements of the urban form and how they interact; my claim is that to examine a city, one must know its components and how they join to weave the urban fabric. My third chapter, the first of my specific analyses of urban design in literature, focuses on the Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio and his vision of Florence: through the course of the Decameron, Boccaccio reconstructs urban space in the wake of the Black Death and eventually reconstitutes civilization through his expansion of space and scale over the course of the book. My fourth chapter travels forward to the Laudatio florentinae urbis of Leonardo Bruni, and his quest to translate the city of Florence into a text, creating a version of history that places Florence in line for inheritance of the Roman Empire, and, thus, the world. The fifth and final chapter examines the works of Machiavelli through the lens of his understanding of Girolamo Savonarola, and both of their perceptions on the public spaces of Florence. For Machiavelli, the piazza is ultimately a theatrical space, as evidenced by his play the Mandragola, and his conception of the power of belief versus that of understanding is the key to his attitudes towards Savonarola, who ultimately failed because he had insufficient understanding of the power he held in the public sphere.

Each of these authors treats Florence differently, and each author, while working with the same source material, highlights different elements of the urban form in the course of their respective works. The political identities and agendas that lie within the city walls shine through when treated through the lens of literature, and our understanding of Florence as a city that contains multitudes grows more nuanced with every building described.