Walking Through History. An Interdisciplinary Approach to Flavio Biondo’s Spaces in the "Italia Illustrata"

Abstract

This volume presents the results on an ongoing research about the use of digital humanities methods for analyzing spatial meanings in Renaissance texts and maps, specifically focusing on Flavio Biondo’s Italia Illustrata. The authors use computational and corpus-driven text and map analysis, as well as cognitive anthropology and gestalt theory, to identify and visualize spatial concepts encoded in historical maps and texts. They aim to discover sources and provide a cognitive map for readers by encoding information in a way that helps readers understand spatial information. The text also discusses the plurality of spaces and the changing perspectives of spatial concepts over time, particularly from the Renaissance to the digital age.