The Constituent Power of the Word (13th-14th century)

This project aims at an interdisciplinary investigation of the origins of a new way of thinking about political space and community between the 13th and the 15th century as the accession, appropriation and constitution of a new public word in its rhetorical, philosophical and literary dimensions. As a matter of fact, defining the power of the word in the civic life, according to our hypothesis, is a common concern of various different disciplines (philosophy, theology, literature), new genres (i.e., civic historiography or novellas), different social groups (i.e. clerics and lay people), and genders (men and women). The fundamental aim of this proposal is the analysis of this process through the interaction of different disciplines and a variety of groups of texts. The project is structured around a few very specific debates, topics or case studies that represent at the same time midterm goals and stages of research. For instance: a) The Origins of the human community. Myths and functions; b) The Theme of Pleasure as Public Space; c) Historiography and Rhetoric. The Origins and Future of the City; d) philosophy, theology- literature and politics; e) The City of women. The project suggests that the convergence of the forms of knowledge and the conflict of traditions in the period examined (13th century-beginning of the 15th century) gives way to a variety of experiments, models, paradigms that aim at founding and appropriating a new public space, grounded on special linguistic exchanges. It is precisely, this suspension, this bracketing that produces conflicts and creates new orders of thought, making the modern age possible. Goals: 1) The principal aim is to prepare materials for writing a monograph about the changes and the contacts between theological, rhetorical and philosophical paradigms in political thought from the second half of the 13th to the first half of the 14th century. These are centered around the relationship between word, community and constituent power. In order to achieve this aim, its necessary to clarify the aims and characteristics of different groups of texts and traditions. For instance, its important to discuss the following research goals, as I fully explain in the proposal: a) The causative word in political theology. b) Word and language as foundation of the human community. c) The word that certifies (notary culture). d) Poeta-theologus. e) Latin and vernaculars.

The project The Constituent Power of the Word at the Commencement of Modernity (13th-14th century). An Interdisciplinary Approach was a two-years project founded by the FWF, hosted by the <> of the Faculty of Catholic Theology in Wien, led by Gianluca Briguglia in 2012-2014. The most important scientific results have been a broader and proper comprehension of a new cultural phenomenon between the 13th and the 14th century, that is the birth of a new idea of the public word and the public space: new political genres, disciplines, institutions raised in this period and became representative of a new idea of city, intended as civic and cultural milieu. A general reformulation of the relation between different fields of knowledge and literary genres in the late Middle Ages has been also achieved: texts coming from various contexts andaddressed to various audiences have been compared and synchronically approached: philosophy/politics, theology/poetry, rhetoric/history.The principal aim of the project was the investigation of the origin of a new way of thinking the political space and the community, considered as the birthplace of a new public discourse between 13th and 14th century, a new way of speaking about politics with rhetorical, philosophical and literary features. The life of cultivated people consists more in saying than in doing: the claim of the judge Albertano da Brescia (12th-13th c.) defines the core of the project, i.e. such saying and its specific field of action, which coincides with the foundation of the civic life. The project has been developed around a few specific topics/case studies.