Peter Burke
Historical Discourse in Renaissance Italy
This paper is concerned with the writing of history in Renaissance Italy and in particular on the representation in texts of the spoken word, especially formal speeches (orazioni or discorsi), which may be regarded as a kind of ‘ritual (or ritualized) language’. The paper will emphasize two moments of change or ‘rupture’, c. 1400 and c. 1600. At the first moment, formal speeches were introduced into written histories, while at the second moment, they were generally abandoned.
The main questions with which I expect to be concerned are the following. Why were speeches introduced into histories? What were their functions in the text and their uses for readers? On what grounds were they criticized at the time? Why were they eventually abandoned?
So far as examples are concerned, I expect to say something about the histories written by Leonardo Bruni, Poggio Bracciolini, and Paolo Sarpi, but to devote most attention to Machiavelli’s Istorie fiorentine and Guicciardini’s Storia d’Italia.
In this way I hope to encourage a kind of dialogue between Renaissance texts and 20th-century literary theories (especially those of Bakhtin, Barthes, and Foucault).