La parole dans la cité : Rhétorique, littérature et politique dans la Toscane du XIIIe siècle

Abstract

This article examines the works of Bono Giamboni and Brunetto Latini in light of the wider phenomenon of the vulgarization of knowledge in 13 th century Tuscany. These authors write for a new type of audience, laic and urban, and they shape their teaching according to the social and political realities of urban society. They give a central place to rhetoric, which they consider – according to an anthropological conception which links the faculty of language to the social nature of man – as the basis of an ethic of civil life. Concerning Bono Giamboni, the analysis focuses on his Libro dei vizi e delle virtudi and shows that its allegorical form conveys a moral and political message, which is intended to be an answer to the crisis of social order and values. In Brunetto Latini, his rhetorical teaching in the Rettorica and the encyclopedia with political aims in the Tresor are completed by an allegorical poem, the Tesoretto , which puts the moral doctrine into the frame of a tale of initiation that exalts the importance of knowledge, the central value for our authors and for the society in which they wrote.