A conference by dr. Toni Veneri, University of Trieste. Event in collaboration with the Società Dante Alighieri in Haifa.
Young Italian scholars travelling between East and West
Young Italian scholars travelling between East and West MAPS AND TRAVEL REPORTAGES BETWEEN THE MIDDLE AGES AND THE RENAISSANCEA conference by dr. Toni Veneri, University of Trieste.Event in collaboration with the Società Dante Alighieri in Haifa.Maps, as are known today, offer a representation of planet Earth based on a homogeneous and measurable idea of space. This type of map won over during the Renaissance, due to the rediscovery of Ptolemy's ancient geographic work, and due to both the invention of the press and the effects of the first great oceanic navigation enterprises.Previous medieval cartographic traditions were based on very different images of the world. They mixed time and space, history and geography, classic and biblical sources.The lecture will retrace the forms in which this change occurred, mostly due to the work of XV and XVI Century Italian scholars and cartographers.Also the interactions between cartography and travelling practices – pilgrimage in primis – will be taken into account: the religious element and the need to reaffirm what was known already give way to exploration ventures and to the description of what had remained until then unknown. Toni Veneri lives in Trieste, where, after the archivist qualification (2009), he obtained in 2011 his PhD in Italian Literature and was appointed "cultore della materia" in Comparative Literature and Literary Theory. Besides acting as Director of the Istituto Gramsci del Friuli Venezia Giulia, and working as a high school teacher (Literature, History, Latin), he is currently completing his post-doctoral research at the University of Haifa. His areas of interest overlap: the literary and scientific construction of space in late Medieval and early modern times; travel literature in its encounters with the history of cartography, art, print and diplomacy; theoretical issues between history and literature. Event in Italian. Sunday, February 2nd 2014, at 16:30Società Dante Alighieri, @ Na'amatsderot Moriah 67 – Haifa