Giordano Bruno’s Geometry of Language

Bruno’s writing is a striking ex of geometry’s explicit & implicit participation in language. His work demonstrates an attentiveness to the figurative; that is to the figures of both classical rhetoric & Euclidean geometry. My dissertation investigates what is geometric of Bruno's language & what is rhetorical about his geometric diagrams. Through 3 "geometric readings” I demonstrate that certain geometric figures echo & complement Bruno’s use of the figurative idiom.
Ch One offers an historical overview of geometry in 16th-century Europe, & an assessment of Bruno’s mathematical expertise. Here, I also account for the paucity of scholarship on Bruno's geometry & on the relationship btw his language & his mathematics. In the body of the dissertation I isolate 3 categories of geometric form—the curve, the angle, & the straight line—& 3 works by Bruno. In Ch Two, I consider the "curvilinear tropes” of circumlocution, hyperbole, ellipsis, & parable in the Cena de le ceneri, arguing that ethical, cosmological, & theological principles are reflected in & emphasized by the geometric rhetoric of the dialogue. In Ch Three, I examine the “angles” in Bruno’s De gli eroicifurori as expressed in tropes of contradiction (such as oxymoron) & in “axial” tropes (such as chiasmus) that revisit Bruno’s philosophy of coincidentia oppositorum. In the 4th ch, I trace Bruno’s critique of pedantic thought in the Candelaio through manifestations of rhetorical & conceptual “rectilinearity” in the tropes of listing and inversion.
In Bruno’s writing, word & image intersect & clamor for recognition. To expand our understanding of Bruno’s philosophical thought, we must articulate this intersection. In so doing, we also open a door onto the larger question of how geometry contributes to the rhetoric of argumentation & literature as a whole. In my Conclusion, I draft a theory for the "geometric reading” of literature, outlining the