Linguaggio e filosofia nel seicento europeo & Una quiete operosa: Forma e pratiche dell"Accademia napoletana degli Oziosi 1611-1645. .

Marta Fattori. Linguaggio e filosofia nel seicento europeo.

(Lessico Intellettuale Europeo, 83.) Florence: Leo S. Olschki, 2000. xxxiv + 430 pp. + 11 color pls. illus. [euro]55.96. ISBN: 88-222-4857-0.

Girolamo de Miranda. Una quiete operosa: Forma e pratiche dell"Accademia napoletana degli Oziosi 1611-1645.

Naples: Fridericiana Editrice Universitaria, 2000. xiii + 393 pp. index, append. illus. [euro]20.66.

ISBN: 88-8338-005-3.

These two volumes have little in common, except that both reveal in their respective ways intriguing aspects of early seventeenth-century Italian life and letters. Marta Fattori has collected in this volume a series of fourteen articles and correspondence written between 1983 and 1997 dealing with language and philosophy in seventeenth-century Europe. Together they comprise a fascinating and significant grasp of early modern philosophy and the critical role of language in its development.

De Miranda starts with a detailed history of the Neapolitan Academy of the Oziosi (men and women of leisure devoted to science, art, and letters), from its earliest roots in 1500 with Giacopo Sanazzaro, Sebastiano Minturno, and others and ending with Giambattista Manso in 1645. He goes on to detail the precise structure and practices of the academy in the remainder of the book.

Fattori contends that Latin continued to be the language of the Republic of Letters during this period, while it continued to flourish as a plastic language in a constant and reciprocal exchange and development through osmosis with vernacular languages. Detailed word-frequency studies demonstrate the "osmosis" that occurred during this period, particularly among Latin, French, Italian, and English. This mutual influence is seen most prominently in the language of the natural sciences (e.g., telescopium, microscopium, acus nautica, etc.).

Up to the seventeenth century Latin was still the preferred, privileged language of scholarship, since it alone allowed a basic precision and clarity easily understood by all. Even scientific and philosophical works written in the vernacular eventually had to be translated into Latin, not only to receive wider distribution, but to share in or add to the universally accepted definitions of technical terms. For philosophical language during this period, Latin served as the model, medium, and interpreter within which flowed together the classical, late antiquity, medieval, and Renaissance currents as well as the new scientific and philosophical traditions. Latin remained the language of transmission and communication. The ideal Republic of Letters demanded a universal language, Latin, which established universally and univocally understood technical terms (ratio, proportio, anima, forma, etc.) similar in clarity and precision to those of mathematics.

Fattori explores the implications, motives, and directions of this reliance upon Latin as a universal language and its relationship to the vernacular languages, especially through Francis Bacon, J.A.Comenius, Mann Mersenne, Rene Descartes, and others. She demonstrates in intricate derail how Bacon and Descartes especially wrestled with the problem of establishing linguistic clarity and precision and how in Bacon's case, this effort led to his emphasis on the role of the cognitive imagination in the classification of the sciences. This classification led to the reliance of the Encyclopedists (Diderot and D'Alembert) to establish the foundations of modern science and philosophy and therefore of human possibility. In Comenius the emphasis on imagination leads directly to a bolder demand for and reliance upon experience as the basis for developing an encyclopedic program of human development and the reordering of the sciences.

Girolamo de Miranda, best known for his recent publication of the censure by the Holy Office of the Scienza nuova of Giambattista Vico and early seventeenth-century studies, presents an interesting thesis. In a departure from viewing the academy as a place for the legitimation of elites, he suggests that in the case of the Oziosi, their form and practice were born of a compromise among powerfully centrifugal forces in the Naples of the first half of that century. These forces included princes, knights, and administrators of the vice-regency, ecclesiastics, and literary figures. All came together as persons seeking "otium," leisure to confront literary problematics, to study and take innocent delight in a wide range of subjects, and to engage in practices themselves innocent but important to the community as a whole. The inspiration is from Saint Augustine and Petrarch who both espoused withdrawal from mundane considerations and the pursuit of the solitary life. This withdrawal, to the extent possible for thos e otherwise occupied with the affairs of state, church, or life in general, affords sufficient leisure (otium) to pursue great literary efforts and serious contemplation. De Miranda demonstrates how the practice of the Academy always sought to create and maintain a unified, tranquil social tapestry blending the interests of the viceroy's court, the ecclesiastical and aristocratic communities, and the citizenry, a tapestry torn by the revolt of Masaniello, and much sought after especially after the departure of Viceroy Lemos in 1615.

The specific practices of the Academy are traced from the years of Viceroy Lemos (1611-15), through the period of the philological studies of Basil (1616-22) and the influence of the aristocratic commission, to the arrival of Giambattista Marino and the Theater of Glory (1623-28), to the death of the founder and the publication of Manso's Poesie (1629-45). The Academy was variously committed to the study of botany, mathematics, physiognomy, poetry, and theater. The volume includes a number of plates depicting the Academy and some of its key leaders, and concludes with the Rule of the Academy of the Oziosi as an appendix.

Both Fattori's and de Miranda's work are characterized by clear and engaging writing and both constitute a significant addition to the literature of the period, most especially, in the case of Fattori's work, to the central importance of Latin in its relation to the ascendancy and exclusive dominion of the vernacular languages in early modern times.