Abstract

It is embarrassing, to say the least, to admit in limine the impossibility of defining the key concepts of this paper, for I do not know either what tradition is or what topoi are. And what is even worse, I have no theoretical conclusions to present. But, after all, why define tradition? We all know what tradition is since it is one of the staples of our academic fare. Even the word itself is in great part an academic one. As a matter of fact, in classical Latin, what we mean by tradition was expressed by words like memoria or institutum or mos vetus, whereas traditio meant surrender or the handing over of a city or of an enemy, although the meaning of instruction, training, teaching is also attested. It was the latter meaning that prevailed in the humanistic period, though with the technical sense of transmission of a text; and in this special meaning the word traditio still survives in the discipline of textual criticism. Of course, the transmission of the text was understood not only in the material sense but also as a means of conveying ancient wisdom, as a witness to its institutions and mores. So the revival of ancient learning implied a reconstruction of a tradition which was thought to have been broken during the Middle Ages. Thus, the studia humanitatis were defined as study of the past, a very well circumscribed past. Even today when we talk about humanistic studies we understand in great part the study of the institutions, mentality, literary movements of the past. Paolo A. Cherci, associate professor in the department of Romance languages and literatures at the University of Chicago, is the editor of Tommaso Garzoni's Works and the author of the forthcoming works, Capitoli di Critica Cervantina, Effemeridi Romaunze, and a collection of short stories, Erostratismo