La thèse se propose d’étudier le développement des traités de dialectique à la Renaissance, en suivant un parcours chronologique qui mène de Lorenzo Valla à Pierre de La Ramée. Ces auteurs ne sont pas seulement abordés pour leur contribution aux arts du langage, il s’agit également de mettre en évidence la conception de l'esprit humain qu’ils défendent afin de mieux saisir la philosophie de l'esprit que les anime. En cela, notre réflexion ne saurait se limiter à réinsérer ces quelques auteurs majeurs dans la multitude, bien réelle, des traités dialectiques de l’époque. Définie comme « science des sciences », la dialectique présente, à la Renaissance, de fortes affinités avec la rhétorique. Il s'agit donc de comprendre comment l'analyse du langage à la Renaissance, largement tributaire du latin des auteurs classiques, s’oriente vers une topique de l’esprit consacrée aux formes multiples de raisonnement. En développant la discussion sur la dialectique, la thèse prend ainsi le parti d’insister sur le rôle de la théorie de la connaissance / The research proposes to study the development of the dialectical treatises during the Renaissance. In order to achieve this objective a path was chosen, going from Lorenzo Valla to Pierre de La Ramée. These authors are approached not only as offering a reflexion on language, but rather to detect the conception of the intellect they highlight. Having said that, it will not be the case to simply reinsert these authors, central for the understanding of the topic, in the actual swarm of dialectical treatises during the time, but rather to grasp the reflexion concerning the operations of the intellect, that animate them. During the Renaissance, Dialectic and Rhetoric will be brought closer and their cooperation worked in many different ways, the text will thus discuss how the analysis of the language set forth during the time, strongly supported by the Latin of classic authors, will be shifted toward a topic of the intellect, dedicated to multiples forms of reasoning. This 'dialectical' movement was not an uniform one, nevertheless, the works here consulted can be placed within the framework of a growing participation of the theory of knowledge in the discussions about dialectic, understood as the science of sciences

In Rhythm Changes: Jazz Rhythm in the African American Novel, I demonstrate how novelists from the Harlem Renaissance to the Black Arts Movement adapted jazz rhythm into literary form. In the prologue to Invisible Man, Ralph Ellison famously defines invisibility as a state of being “never quite on the beat.” Ellison frames the novel as a kind of translation of the “invisible” rhythm the narrator hears in Louis Armstrong, a syncopated rhythm rooted in Black aesthetic and cultural forms. “Could this compulsion to put invisibility down in black and white be thus an urge to make music of invisibility?” Ellison was not alone in this project. The writers I study all exemplify what Duke Ellington calls a “tone parallel”—the concept that literary form could reproduce or “parallel” the particularities of musical form. However, these writers find literary strategies to transcend parallelism, such that the lines between medium begin to touch. Considering devices that cut across music and literature—anaphora, antiphonal dialogue, polysyndeton, parataxis—I argue that novelists, not just poets, respond formally to the rhythmic concepts they hear on the bandstand, synthesizing these innovations with a broader literary tradition. Rudolph Fisher’s novel The Conjure-Man Dies brings the complex rhythmic sensibility of Louis Armstrong to detective fiction; Ann Petry’s The Street channels the rhythmic phrasing of Ethel Waters in a “novel of social criticism”; Ellison’s epic unfinished second novel follows the paratactic rhythm of the preacher and jazz trombonist; and Amiri Baraka’s The System of Dante’s Hell projects the rhythm of Sonny Rollins and Cecil Taylor onto Charles Olson’s “Projective Verse.” By finding the literary in the musical and vice versa, these novelist-experimenters move beyond Pater’s credo that all art aspires to the condition of music.

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La doctrine leibnizienne de la science repose-t-elle sur une théorie de la connaissance? Après avoir montré, dans des travaux préalables, qu’une telle dépendance ne se rencontre pas dans l’œuvre de la maturité, nous nous intéressons ici aux premiers écrits de Leibniz. La Nova Methodus discendae docendaeque Jurisprudentiae (1667) dresse, suivant l’exemple de Bacon, un inventaire raisonné des disciplines que doit réunir la nouvelle encyclopédie. Comme dans les projets leibniziens ultérieurs, cet inventaire est précédé de la distinction entre types de savoir en fonction des critères logiques selon lesquels les propositions se répartissent entre histoires, observations et théorèmes. Nous nous attachons en particulier à la définition de ceux-ci comme propositions « démontrables ex terminis ». Cette norme de la science étant posée, quels fondements in re Leibniz entend-t-il donner au savoir démonstratif ? Prenant pour fil conducteur sa polémique avec l’humaniste Marius Nizolius, nous étudions sa tentative pour fonder la validité des propositions de vérité éternelle sur des universaux subsistant indépendamment de l’existence des individus. Ce n’est cependant que dans les premiers écrits parisiens (1672-1673) que se dégage sa réponse définitive à ce problème : apparue d’abord comme un autre nom de la signification qu’« exprime » une définition, la notion d’idée y prend consistance en tant qu’archétype subsistant en Dieu. Les principaux traits de la théorie leibnizienne de la science sont ainsi fixés, indépendamment de toute « doctrine de l’entendement ». / Does Leibniz’s doctrine of demonstrative knowledge rest upon a theory of cognition? Having shown in previous articles that such was not the case in his mature works, we now turn to his early writings. The Nova Methodus discendae docendaeque Jurisprudentiae (1667) contains a reasoned inventory of the disciplines that should constitute the new encyclopaedia. As in later projects, Leibniz precedes this inventory with a classification of the types of knowledge based on the logical criteria according to which propositions are divided in histories, observations and theorems. Particular attention is given to the definition of the latter as propositions « demonstrable ex terminis ».This norm of scientific necessity once defined, what real (in re) foundation does Leibniz give to demonstrative knowledge? Following the various threads offered by his polemic against the Italian humanist Marius Nizolius, we study Leibniz’s attempt to ground the validity of propositions of eternal truth on universals subsisting independently of the existence of individuals. But one has to wait until the first Paris writings (1672-1673) to see the emergence of his mature answer to that problem: first conceived after the model of the significatio which a definition « expresses », the notion of idea reaches its latter ontological status as an archetype subsisting in God’s mind. The principal features of Leibniz’s theory of demonstrative knowledge are thus in place, prior to and independently of what he will later call his « doctrine of the understanding ».

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) / The landscape of James A. Garfield’s Mentor, Ohio home (now preserved at James A. Garfield National Historic Site) contains multiple layers of historical meanings and values. The landscape as portrayed in political biographies, political cartoons, and other ephemera during Garfield’s 1880 presidential campaign reveals the existence of the dual cultural values of agrarian tradition and agricultural progress in the late nineteenth century. Although Garfield did not depend on farming exclusively for his livelihood, he, like many agriculturalists of this era participated in a process of mediation between these dual values. The function of the landscape of Garfield’s farm between 1876 and 1880 is a reflection of this process of mediation. After President Garfield’s assassination in 1881, his wife and children returned to their Mentor home. Between 1885 and c. 1905, Garfield’s widow Lucretia made numerous changes to the agricultural landscape, facilitating the evolution of the home from farm to country estate. Despite the rich history of this landscape, its cultural complexity and evolution over time makes it difficult to interpret for public audiences. Additionally, the landscape is currently interpreted exclusively through indoor museum exhibits and outdoor wayside panels, two formats with severe limitations. I propose the integration of deep mapping into interpretation at James A. Garfield National historic site in order to more effectively represent the multi-layered qualities of its historic landscape.