The Representation of the Orient in the Pilgrimage Diaries of the Florentine corpus (XIV and XV centuries). Men, Women, Costumes, Cultures between Religion and Observation

The article shows the Western perception of the Muslim world through the representation of the pilgrimage’s diaries. In this kind of sources, the contrast between stimulus aroused from the comparison with “otherness” and the resistance that come from a generally hostile and conservative cultural background is in fact evident. The research covers the entire corpus of Florentine diaries and this choice is its peculiarity. Although there are many excellent studies about the pilgrimage, no one develops a systematic study on the representation of the “otherness”, a subject full of consequences for the history of Western thought.