164 / 298
Horst Steinke
164
294
For example, as described in the article entitled “Linguistics” in
The
New Encyclopedia Britannica
, Chicago-London,
2010,
vol. 23, pp. 41-71.
295
Hösle observed: «Zwar wird man nicht bestreiten können, dass Vico
das semantische Problem vernachlãssigt […] (Although it cannot be denied
that Vico neglected the problem of semantics […])» (Id.,
Einleitung
, cit., p.
CLXXX).
296
A historical sense of the enormous range of language-related questions
and issues missing in Vico’s reflections can be attained by perusing L. For-
migari,
A History of Language Philosophies
, trans. by G. Poole, Amsterdam-
Philadelphia, John Benjamins, 2004, originally appeared in Italian as
Il linguag-
gio. Storia delle teorie
, Rome-Bari, Laterza, 2001;
Il linguaggio. Teoria e storia delle
teorie. In onore di Lia Formigari
,
ed. by S. Gensini and A. Martone, intro. by T. de
Mauro, Naples, Liguori, 2006; E. Coseriu,
Die Geschichte der Sprachphilosophie von
der Antike bis zur Gegenwart. Eine Übersicht
,
Part I:
Von der Antike bis Leibniz
,
Tübingen, TBL, 1970.
297
In lieu of an excursus on the significance of “metaphor” in Vico’s pro-
ject of securing the beginnings of human society and culture, see the incisive
discussions in D. Ph. Verene,
Vico’s Science of Imagination,
cit., pp. 172-181; M.
Danesi,
Language and the Origin of the Human Imagination: A Vichian Perspective,
in
«NVS», 4, 1986, pp. 45-56, pp. 50-53; D. Di Cesare,
Sul concetto di metafora in G.
B. Vico,
in «BCSV», XVI, 1986, pp. 325-334.
As subcategories of metaphor,
Vico singles out metonymy (§ 406) and synecdoche (§ 407). The terminology
itself of
metaphor, metonymy, synecdoche
, and other rhetorical terms is clearly
anachronistic as Vico is describing archaic times, before the advent of formal-
ized rhetoric. However, more importantly, what these “technical” terms refer
to is not anachronistic in Vico’s portrayal of rhetoric’s «stature of excellence
and its function as the necessary foundation of politics and jurisprudence
which it had had in antiquity» (G. Vico,
The Art of Rhetoric
(
Institutiones Oratori-
ae, 1711-1741
), trans. from Latin, commentary and intro. by G. Crifò; trans.
and ed. by G. A. Pinton and A. W. Shippee, Amsterdam-Atlanta, Rodopi,
1996, p. 232).
Other elements of primordial rhetoric treated in “Poetic Logic” are «inter-
jections» (§ 448), «digressions» (§ 457), and «inversions» (§ 458). In his hand-
book on rhetoric, Vico treats
interjections
under «
exclamatio
» (p. 185), and
inver-
sions
under «
aposiopesis
» (p. 187). On the complexities of
aposiopesis,
see J.
Mieszkowski,
Who’s Afraid of Anacoluthon?
, in «MLN», 124, 2009, pp. 648-665.
For further discussion of the role of «interjections» in Vico’s theory of lan-
guage origin, including a brief account of E. Cassirer’s views, see A. D’Atri,
The Theory of Interjections in Vico and Rousseau,
in
Historical Roots of Linguistic Theo-