The regions today part of the so-called Mitteleuropa
have held, over the centuries XIII-XV, great political importance in the context
of the international chessboard on which the Italian States especially and also
the State of the Church moved. Francesco Petrarca and Giovanni Boccaccio, two
intellectuals strongly, albeit to varying degrees, involved in the politics of
the time, were sometimes called to take a principal part in events of
international politics. Travel, real or imaginary, physically occurring or
simply described in literary fiction, also because of complex odeporical
inheritance of Dante’s Poem, take on a particular importance in the works of
the two poets: we think of the remarkable presence of travel as narrative
gimmick and motif in the Decameron, or to the work of geographical erudition De fontibus montibus, silvis, or journeydescriptions of Petrarca (Itinerarium breve de Ierusalem et Ianua usque ad
Terram Sanctam) and to its
numerous diplomatic missions, and we can fully appreciate both the fascination
exerted by travel, by geographic knowledge on these poets, in their attention
to the description of the places, people, sometimes even of customs, which –
along with other outstanding examples, including Marco Polo’s Milione – in turn
fascinated travellers for centuries.