PT Journal
AU Miller, J
TI "Zu bawen diese Stadt, Die ihres gleichen nicht in ganz Europa hat": The Image of an Ideal Society and Literary Strategies in Early Modern Urban Historiography
SO Historica Olomucensia
PY 2016
BP 57
EP 72
VL 51
IS 2
DI 10.5507/ho.2016.031
DE City; Early Modern Period; Ideal Society; Urban Historiography
AB In addition to keeping collective memory, medieval and early modern urban historiography aimed at idealizing the city. To achieve the goal, urban authors resorted to allegory and metaphor that served as the most frequently used literary strategies. Compared to garden, ship, human body and/or precisely working clock, the city was depicted in urban chronicles, panegyrics and private memories as a perfect society marked with harmony, concord, order, collectivism and symmetry (beauty). Presented as the ideal, well-governed and well-organized social and political bodies cities and their constitutions served as patterns to be followed by european territorial states.
ER