Review of Giambattista Vico, The Art of Rhetoric (Institutiones Oratoriae)

Abstract

This is a review of an English language translation of Giambattista Vico's treatise on rhetoric, The Art of Rhetoric (Institutiones Oratoriae, 1711-1741). From the Definitive Latin Text and Notes, Italian Commentary and Introduction by Giuliano Crifò. Ed. and trans. Giorgio A. Pinton and Arthur W. Shippee. The review discusses the relevance of rhetoric for the understanding of Vico's thought, and more specifically the (limited) presence in this early rhetorical treatise of the celebrated tropological theory of cultural development formulated by Vico. Some comment is also made of Vico's concept of the retrospective fallacy, which may make us read into an early text those concepts that would only be elaborated later on. In a sense, this paper is also related to an interest in the interpretive function of retrospection, a line of inquiry we develop in other papers.

Keywords: Vico, Rhetoric, Retrospection, Fallacies, Philology