This dissertation explores the notion of syntax-in the Middle Ages, within the three different yet interrelated fields of theology (Augustine), linguistics (Modistae) and poetics (Dante). It is structured in the form of an interlacing of three textual chapters related to the Mddle Ages and two theoretical sections.
In the first chapter, I explore the relationship between the two Words of God (the Word in Principio and the Word Made Flesh) ant the two words of man (interior and exterior word). I then propose an understanding of syntax—which describes in turn the creative act of God in the Universe; Christ, the syntax of history; and the underlying structure of human speech—as a collaboration between time and eternity.
Chapter III explores the primacy of syntax within the linguistic theory of the Modistae, a group of grammarians operating in Paris at the end of the XIII century. Within their linguistic system I highlight the notion of “syntax of reality,” as an interplay between substance and accident, matter and form. I finally detect, within syntax, a notion of desire as a drive toward stillness and termination.
Desire becomes central in the chapter on Dante (ch. V). I first examine Dante's “theory of language” in terms of the widening gap between the language of God and the mutable, unruly human language, which only poetry can “syntactically” bind and regulate. I then trace, within the Divine Comedy, the interconnected maps of language (as mere sound in Inferno, sign in Purgatorio and pure meaning in Paradiso) and of desire (as drive toward communication and as structural notion). At the end I propose the idea of “syntax of poetry,” as a coming together of language and desire in the construction of the poem.
Two theoretical sections—“Syntax” (II) and “Desire” (IV)—are intended to sharpen the key-notions of syntax and desire and to verify them against contemporary reflection.