Ars memoriae and scriptura interna : nature, language and creativity in Giordano Bruno

This study is concerned with Giordano Bruno’s ars memoriae and the relation between his works on mnemonics and philosophy. The hermeneutic hypothesis that will be explored is that it is Giordano Bruno’s works on the mnemonic arts that first reveal his new elaboration of the concept of order, which will then be completed in his philosophical works, especially those focusing on the concepts of Nature, Language and praxis developed therein. The thesis is divided into six chapters that explore the research statement into more detail on three levels. The first level concerns a historiographic approach that assesses the most effective method of investigation to determine the place of Bruno’s works on mnemotechnics in the development of his philosophy as a whole. The method will be defined by comparing Hans Blumenberg’s metaphorology (Metaphorologie) and his interpretation of Bruno’s thought and the role he played in the transition from the Middle Ages to the Modern Age. This in turn leads to a more accurate definition of the subject of this research, namely the role that the metaphor of inner writing plays in Giordano Bruno’s works on ars memoriae. The second level analyses the metaphor of inner writing in a metaphorological way and compares this with another essential metaphor in order to understand Giordano Bruno’s philosophy, that is to say the metaphor of the shadow. Although the third level remains in the background, it provides a framework for the first two levels in the Introduction and Conclusion, and advances another research hypothesis that examines whether the absolute metaphor of inner writing, which is closely related to the concept of order, can be further explored as a paradigm in order to gain a better understanding of the history of philosophical and scientific interpretations of memory.