La questione della lingua e i massimi sistemi della cultura

Description

My dissertation offers an innovative critical approach to the questione della lingua , from Pietro Bembo's Prose della volgar lingua (1525) to Leonardo Salviati's Avvertimenti della lingua sopra 'l Decameron (1584). Drawing from twentieth century philosophy of language, cultural theory and anthropology, I argue that Italian Renaissance intellectuals formalized language not just for linguistic reasons, but as a strategy to deal with the rise of modernity and its most subversive and frightening implications: contingency of values, materialism, endless change, curiositas . In turn, their project yielded a new practical consciousness, a new knowledge later defined as "culture", that implicitly challenged and splintered their old ideas of truth, morality, and naturalness. Ludwig Wittgenstein's concepts of "meaning as representation" and "meaning as use" help identify two nascent theoretical trends that emerged. The former located linguistic meaning and rules in something exterior to and preceding the practice of language, such as nature or Platonic ideas; the latter located linguistic meaning and rules in the speakers' use of language. These contrasting theories shaped Italy culturally as much as linguistically. Ultimately I argue the questione illustrates languages' crucial role in the creation of community, and demonstrates that free discourse facilitates compassion and spreads solidarity across both linguistic and political borders.

Chapter One interprets Pietro Bembo's successful canonization of Petrarch and Boccaccio's language and style as an attempt to make language a conservative structure. Chapter Two contrasts Giangiorgio Trissino's idealistic Italian, with Nicco1ò Machiavelli's "disciplined" Florentine, and Tolomei's Tuscan shaped by "usage", "chance", "free imagination" and the natural environment. Chapter Three explores Castiglione's courtly language, whose contingency is recognized as essential to express new ideas and create a community centered around a secular "grace". Chapter Four discusses Sperone Speroni's account of the split between philosophy, culture, and the cult of language. Chapter Five examines Giovanni Battista Gelli, Pierfrancesco Giambullari and Benedetto Varchi's attempt to prove the natural superiority of modern Florentine over both ancient and modern European languages.