The Enchantress Of Florence

Part 2 of The Enchantress of Florence tells the story of three friends in the Italian city-state of Florence in the Renaissance era. The three friends are very different, but they will all play vital roles in the story of Mogor’s ancestors. The depiction of the city of Florence functions as both a contrast and a comparison with Sikri. Throughout the story, familiar figures and archetypes are repeated. Characters such as the Skeleton and the Mattress have already appeared in Sikri, but similar characters appear in Florence, as well. The repetition of these figures is a deft move by the storyteller, Mogor. By framing his story around these familiar figures, Mogor is able to appeal directly to Akbar’s empathy. He constructs his story with ideas, people, and structures that the emperor understands, so as not to create too alien of a world.

Mogor has an objective in telling the story. He wants to reintegrate himself into the family which his ancestors were forced to leave behind. He needs Akbar to understand the relationship between them and to accept that even a figure as strange as Mogor could be a product of Akbar’s world. By building the story around these familiar pillars, Mogor is deliberately creating a bridge between the past and the present, the East and the West, and the emperor and himself. By reminding the emperor that Florence as a city is both strange and familiar, Mogor can walk the fine line between intrigue and empathy in his audience of one.

The act of storytelling is a constant presence in the novel. The structure of Part 2 reiterates this. In a narrative sense, Part 2 is a story within a story: Mogor recalls the story of the three friends in Florence and Akbar listens. The interactions between Mogor and Akbar provide an interruption to the linear narrative. Akbar corrects the storyteller on the tone and framing of the story, for example, compelling Mogor to make alterations to his narration. These interjections often take the form of italicized text situated in separate paragraphs. These separate paragraphs punctuate and alter the story being told, actively reminding the audience of the framing device itself. The novel constantly reiterates its own fictional nature, not only drawing the audience’s attention to the story being told but to the way in which it is being told. The interjections from Akbar change the way in which the story is told, allowing him to change the world of the past just as he dreamed his favorite wife into existence. The interplay between the fictional world and the supposedly real world emphasizes The Power of Stories and the power of the emperor alike, suggesting that the emperor’s true power is his ability to dominate and govern a narrative as though it were his own empire.

The portrayal of Italy is also an important indicator of the ways in which identities are constructed in The Enchantress of Florence. At the time of the Renaissance, Italy was not a unified country. Instead, the Italian peninsula was home to many individual city states or republics, as well as smaller countries which were governed by distant, foreign empires. Florence and Genoa are two examples of city states which have some degree of independence and national identity, but whose inhabitants are still referred to as Italians. An idea of an Italian national identity exists, one which transcends the names and nationalities of the people involved. The characters can be Italian and Florentine at once, just as Qara Koz can be Angelica and Mogor can be Niccolo Vespucci. The construction of a unified Italian identity as a collection of individual states is a reflection of the creation of individual identities as a collection of names. Angelica becomes Angelica by passing through a series of life experiences and a series of names. Mogor makes a similar journey. In his story, he presents Italy as a nation of fractured identities, which helps to tell the story of his ancestors as people whose identities have been similarly fractured.