Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-rcrh6 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-04T09:16:29.412Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Latin as a Common Language: The Coherence of Lorenzo Valla’s Humanist Program

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2018

Lodi Nauta
Lodi Nauta*
Affiliation:
Rijksuniversiteit Groningen
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

In his critique of the language and thought of the Scholastics, Lorenzo Valla contrasts classical Latin as a natural, common language to the so-called artificial, technical, and unnatural language of his opponents. He famously champions Quintilian’s view that one should follow common linguistic usage. Scholars, however, have disagreed about the precise interpretation of these qualifications of Latin. This article argues that, depending on the historical, rhetorical, and argumentative contexts, Valla uses notions such as common and natural in different ways to suit different purposes. Such a contextualized reading has repercussions for an evaluation of the coherence of Valla’s humanist program.

Type
Research Article
Information
Renaissance Quarterly , Volume 71 , Issue 1 , Spring 2018 , pp. 1 - 32
Copyright
Copyright © Renaissance Society of America 2018

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Besomi, Ottavio. “Dai ‘Gesta Ferdinandi’ di Valla al ‘De Orthographia’ di Tortelli.” Italia medioevale e umanistica 9 (1966): 75–121.Google Scholar
Biondo, Flavio. De Verbis Romanae Locutionis. Ed. Donne, Fulvio Delle. Rome: Istituto Italiano per il Medio Evo, 2008.Google Scholar
Burke, Peter, and Porter, Roy, eds. Languages and Jargons: Contributions to a Social History of Language. Cambridge: Polity Press, 1995.Google Scholar
Camporeale, Salvatore I. Lorenzo Valla: Umanesimo e teologia. Florence: Nella sede dell’Istituto Palazzo Strozzi, 1972.Google Scholar
Cesarini Martinelli, Lucia. “Note sulla polemica Poggio-Valla e sulla fortuna delle Elegantiae .” Interpres: Rivista di studi quattrocenteschi 3 (1980): 29–79.Google Scholar
Cicero, . On the Orator: Books 1–2. Trans. Sutton, E. W. and Rackham, H.. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1942a.Google Scholar
Cicero, . On the Orator: Book 3. On Fate. Stoic Paradoxes. Divisions of Oratory. Trans. Rackham, H.. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1942b.Google Scholar
Codoñer Merino, Carmen. “Elegantia y gramática.” In Lorenzo Valla (2010), 1:67–109.Google Scholar
Coletti, V. Storia dell’Italiano letterario: Dalle origini al Novecento. Turin: Einaudi, 1993.Google Scholar
Considine, John. “ De Ortu et Occasu Linguae Latinae: The Latin Language and the Origins of the Concept of Language Death.” In Latinity and Alterity in the Early Modern Period, ed. Haskell, Yasmin and Ruys, Juanita Feros, 55–77. Turnhout: Brepols, 2010.Google Scholar
Corti, Maria. Dante a un nuovo crucevia. Florence: Libreria commissionaria Sansoni, 1981.Google Scholar
Alighieri, Dante. De l’éloquence en vulgaire. Ed. Rosier-Catach, Irène. Paris: Fayard, 2011.Google Scholar
De Caprio, Vincenzo. “La rinascita della cultura di Roma: La tradizione latina delle Eleganze di Lorenzo Valla.” In Umanesimo a Roma nel Quattrocento, ed. Brezzi, Paolo and Lorch, Maristella, 163–90. Rome: Istituto di studi romani, 1984.Google Scholar
Dionisotti, Carlo. Gli umanisti e il volgare fra Quattro e Cinquecento. Florence: 5 Continents Editions, 1968.Google Scholar
Faithfull, R. Glynn. “The Concept of ‘Living Language’ in Cinquecento Vernacular Philology.” Modern Language Review 48 (1953): 278–92.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fisher, Alan. “The Project of Humanism and Valla’s Imperial Metaphor.” Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies 23 (1993): 301–22.Google Scholar
Fubini, Riccardo. “La coscienza del latino negli umanisti.” Studi medievali 3 (1961): 505–50.Google Scholar
Fubini, Riccardo. Humanism and Secularization: From Petrarch to Valla. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2003.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gaeta, Franco. Lorenzo Valla: Filologia e storia nell’umanesimo italiano. Naples: Nella Sede dell’Istituto Italiano per Gli Studi Storici, 1955.Google Scholar
Gavinelli, Simona. “Teorie grammaticali nelle Elegantie e la tradizione scolastica del tardo umanesimo.” Rinascimento 31 (1991): 155–81.Google Scholar
Gerl, Hanna-Barbara. Rhetorik als Philosophie: Lorenzo Valla. Munich: Wilhelm Fink, 1974.Google Scholar
Grayson, Cecil. A Renaissance Controversy: Latin or Italian? Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1960.Google Scholar
Hankins, James. “The Popularization of Humanism in the Fifteenth Century: The Writings of Leonardo Bruni in Latin and the Vernacular.” In Language and Cultural Change: Aspects of the Study and Use of Language in the Later Middle Ages and the Renaissance, ed. Nauta, Lodi, 133–47. Leuven: Peeters, 2006.Google Scholar
Horace, . Satires. Epistles. The Art of Poetry. Trans. Rushton Fairclough, H.. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1926.Google Scholar
IJsewijn, Jozef. “Alexander Hegius († 1498) Invectiva in Modos Significandi .” Forum for Modern Language Studies 7.4 (1971): 299–318.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Law, Vivien. The History of Linguistics in Europe from Plato to 1600. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lo Monaco, Francesco. “ Vulgus Imperitum Grammatice Professorum: Lorenzo Valla, Le Elegantie e I Grammatici Recentes .” In Lorenzo Valla (2010), 1:51–66.Google Scholar
Lorenzo Valla: La Riforma della Lingua e della Logica. Ed. Regoliosi, Mariangela. 2 vols. Florence: Polistampa, 2010.Google Scholar
Mack, Peter. Renaissance Argument: Valla and Agricola in the Traditions of Rhetoric and Dialectic. Leiden: Brill, 1993.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Marsh, David. “Grammar, Method, and Polemic in Lorenzo Valla’s Elegantiae .” Rinascimento 19 (1979): 91–116.Google Scholar
Martin, Craig. Subverting Aristotle: Religion, History, and Philosophy in Early Modern Science. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2014.Google Scholar
Mazzocco, Angelo. Linguistic Theories in Dante and the Humanists: Studies of Language and Intellectual History in Late Medieval and Early Renaissance Italy. Leiden: Brill, 1993.Google Scholar
Miguel Franco, Ruth. “ Natura vel Usu: Aspectos de la Reflexión Lingüística en el Catholicon de Giovanni Balbi y las Elegantie Lingue Latine de Lorenzo Valla.” In Lorenzo Valla (2010), 1:3–30.Google Scholar
Monfasani, John. “Was Lorenzo Valla an Ordinary Language Philosopher?” Journal of the History of Philosophy 50 (1989): 309–23.Google Scholar
Moss, Ann. Renaissance Truth and the Latin Language Turn. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nauta, Lodi. In Defense of Common Sense: Lorenzo Valla’s Humanist Critique of Scholastic Philosophy. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009.Google Scholar
Nauta, Lodi. “Meaning and Linguistic Usage in Renaissance Humanism: The Case of Lorenzo Valla.” In Linguistic Content: New Essays on the History of Philosophy of Language, ed. Cameron, M. and Stainton, R. J., 136–55. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015a.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nauta, Lodi. “The Order of Knowing: Juan Luis Vives on Language, Thought, and the Topics.” Journal of the History of Ideas 76 (2015b): 325–45.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nauta, Lodi. “The Critique of Scholastic Language in Renaissance Humanism and Early Modern Philosophy.” In Early Modern Philosophers and the Renaissance Legacy, ed. Muratori, Cecilia and Paganini, Gianni, 59–79. Dordrecht: Springer, 2016.Google Scholar
Pittaluga, Stefano. “La restaurazione umanistica.” In Lo spazio letterario del Medioevo, ed. Cavallo, G., Leonardi, C., and Menestò, E., 191–217. Rome: Salerno, 1994.Google Scholar
Priscian, . Institutiones grammatice. Ed. Herz, M.. Vols. 2–3 of Grammatici Latini, ed. Keil, Heinrich. Leipzig, 1855–59.Google Scholar
Quintilian, . Institutio oratoria. Ed. and trans. Russell, D. A.. 5 vols. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001.Google Scholar
Regoliosi, Mariangela. “Le Elegantie del Valla come ‘grammatica’ antinormativa.” Studi di grammatica italiana 19 (2000): 315–36.Google Scholar
Regoliosi, Mariangela. “ Usus e Ratio in Valla.” In Lorenzo Valla (2010), 1:111–30.Google Scholar
Rizzo, Silvia, ed. Valla, Lorenzo, Orazione per l’inaugurazione dell’anno accademico 1455–1456: Atti di un seminario di filologia umanistica. Rome: Roma nel Rinascimento, 1994.Google Scholar
Rizzo, Silvia. Ricerche sul latino umanistico. Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 2002.Google Scholar
Robins, R. H. A Short History of Linguistics. London: Longman, 1997.Google Scholar
Rosier, Irène. La Grammaire speculative des modistes. Lille: Presses universitaires de Lille, 1983.Google Scholar
Rummel, Erika. The Humanist-Scholastic Debate in the Renaissance and Reformation. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000.Google Scholar
Seneca, . Epistulae morales ad Lucilium. Ed. Reynolds, L. D.. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1965.Google Scholar
Schmidt, Gabriela. Thomas More und die Sprachenfrage: Humanistische Sprachtheorie und die translatio studii im England der frühen Tudorzeit. Heidelberg: Winter, 2009.Google Scholar
Tavoni, Mirko. “The Fifteenth-Century Controversy on the Language Spoken by the Ancient Romans: An Inquiry into Italian Humanist Concepts of ‘Latin,’ ‘Grammar,’ and ‘Vernacular.’” Historiographia Linguistica 9.3 (1982): 237–64.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tavoni, Mirko. Latino, grammatica, volgare: Storia di una questione umanistica. Padua: Antenore, 1984.Google Scholar
Tavoni, Mirko. “Lorenzo Valla e il volgare.” In Lorenzo Valla e l’umanesimo italiano: Atti del convegno internazionale di studi umanistici, ed. Besomi, Ottavio and Regoliosi, Mariangela, 199–216. Padua: Antenore, 1986.Google Scholar
Valla, Lorenzo. Opera Omnia (1540). 2 vols. Reprint, Turin: Bottega d’Erasmo, 1962.Google Scholar
Valla, Lorenzo. Antidotum Primum. Ed. Wesseling, Ari. Assen: Van Gorcum, 1978.Google Scholar
Valla, Lorenzo. Antidotum in Facium. Ed. Regoliosi, Mariangela. Padua: Antenore, 1981.Google Scholar
Valla, Lorenzo. Repastinatio Dialectice et Philosophie. Ed. Zippel, Gianni. 2 vols. Padua, 1982.Google Scholar
Valla, Lorenzo. Raudensiane Notae. Ed. Gian Matteo Corrias. Florence: Polistampa, 2007.Google Scholar
Valla, Lorenzo. Dialectical Disputations. Ed. and trans. Copenhaver, Brian P. and Nauta, Lodi. 2 vols. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2012.Google Scholar
Waswo, Richard. “The ‘Ordinary Language Philosophy’ of Lorenzo Valla.” Bibliothèque d’Humanisme et Renaissance 41 (1979): 255–71.Google Scholar
Waswo, Richard. Language and Meaning in the Renaissance. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wels, V. Triviale Künste: Die humanistische Reform der grammatischen, dialektischen und rhetorischen Ausbildung an der Wende zum 16. Jahrhundert. Berlin: Weidler, 2000.Google Scholar
Wesseling, Ari. “Agricola and Word Explanation.” In Rodolphus Agricola Phrisius, 1444–1485: Proceedings of the International Conference at the University of Groningen, 28–30 October 1985, ed. Akkerman, F. and Vanderjagt, Arjo, 229–35. Leiden: Brill, 1988.Google Scholar