Resumen de I nomi dei gatti: concetti, modelli e interpretazioni nella storiografia politica e istituzionale d’Italia (a proposito di tardo medioevo e Rinascimento).

Isabella Lazzarini

• If periodization ranks among the more elusive tasks of historical scholarship, that is particularly true when it becomes a battlefield between different historiographical traditions and ideological grand narratives. ‘Late middle ages’ and ‘Renaissance’ are crucial concepts both in Italian history and Western ideology. Their origins are different, but their use is frequently connected, and their conceptual story sometimes antagonistic. The present essay aims at looking at research on the medieval and early modern Italian peninsula from the 1950s to present days in order to investigate some aspects and facets of the historiographical debate that surrounded – both in Italy and in the Anglo-American world – the increasing use of ‘late middle ages’ and the recent ‘rediscovery’ of a political Renaissance.