Literature in the University: Giambattista Vico’s Ideal Type

Abstract

This article re-evaluates the place of literature within Giambattista Vico’s ideas about education. It examines his orations De mente heroica (1732) and De nostri temporis studiorum ratione (1709) alongside the Scienza nuova (1744) and Vico’s 1729 letter to Francesco Saverio Estevan, connecting his concept of imaginative universals to his ideas about literary characters. It shows how by problematizing the idea of literary truth and representation, Vico emphasizes fiction’s cognitive and ethical potential. For Vico, literature provides a unique opportunity for both self-knowledge and the study of human society. Because of the link between poetry and common sense, fiction becomes the means that can make it possible to bridge the gap between the particular and the universal. Vico’s notion of realism and his conception of literary characters as ideal types grant fiction the unique power to reshape reality and not merely to represent it.