This dissertation examines the conceptualization of the ideal society in Western culture in relation to changes in communication modes. The utopian discourse is defined by a concern with the relationship between language and reality. I explore this concern as a reflection of the theoretical disposition invited by changes in communication modes, which are perceived as crises of representation. Plato and Thomas More’s enlightened communities in the Republic and Utopia reflect comparable idealistic perspectives on education. In my view, this optimism stems from the social reality of growing literacies with the advent of the alphabet and printing, respectively. I contend that these writers are animated by an ethical impulse to teach their readers that language is representation. From the vantage point of this knowledge, each individual may employ language symbolically in order to create and perpetuate a moral and spiritual mode of thought. I argue that the discourse of the ideal is the symbolic expression of humanity’s engagement with death, the ultimate existential concern made acute by the aspect of historical discontinuity in the crisis of representation. Plato and More exhibit comparable efforts to open to their readers the superior space of critical reflexivity which they themselves inhabit. From this conceptual, pre-representational space of conscious choice, language is subjected to achieving spiritual progress. I introduce the concept of post-utopia, which describes a pragmatic moment when the relationship between author and the ideal society is brought into the foreground and reinforced as a way of addressing concerns with textual authority. I examine these developments in Augustine’s De Civitate Dei, François Rabelais’s episode of the Abbaye de Thélème in Gargantua, and Francis Bacon’s New Atlantis. These authors draw on the ideologies of representation inherent in utopian discourse, and position the authorial figure as link between scriptural teleology and history, ensuring spiritual and societal betterment in the textual cultures of late antiquity and early modernity. The figure of the author emerges as a symbol of history and of man’s ability to assume the limits of the mind and of language.

This dissertation examines the conceptualization of the ideal society in Western culture in relation to changes in communication modes. The utopian discourse is defined by a concern with the relationship between language and reality. I explore this concern as a reflection of the theoretical disposition invited by changes in communication modes, which are perceived as crises of representation. Plato and Thomas More’s enlightened communities in the Republic and Utopia reflect comparable idealistic perspectives on education. In my view, this optimism stems from the social reality of growing literacies with the advent of the alphabet and printing, respectively. I contend that these writers are animated by an ethical impulse to teach their readers that language is representation. From the vantage point of this knowledge, each individual may employ language symbolically in order to create and perpetuate a moral and spiritual mode of thought. I argue that the discourse of the ideal is the symbolic expression of humanity’s engagement with death, the ultimate existential concern made acute by the aspect of historical discontinuity in the crisis of representation. Plato and More exhibit comparable efforts to open to their readers the superior space of critical reflexivity which they themselves inhabit. From this conceptual, pre-representational space of conscious choice, language is subjected to achieving spiritual progress. I introduce the concept of post-utopia, which describes a pragmatic moment when the relationship between author and the ideal society is brought into the foreground and reinforced as a way of addressing concerns with textual authority. I examine these developments in Augustine’s De Civitate Dei, François Rabelais’s episode of the Abbaye de Thélème in Gargantua, and Francis Bacon’s New Atlantis. These authors draw on the ideologies of representation inherent in utopian discourse, and position the authorial figure as link between scriptural teleology and history, ensuring spiritual and societal betterment in the textual cultures of late antiquity and early modernity. The figure of the author emerges as a symbol of history and of man’s ability to assume the limits of the mind and of language.

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La tesi affronta il problema della teatralità presente nel romanzo di François Rabelais (1483-1553). La scrittura dell’umanista contamina i generi letterari attivi tra tardo Medioevo e Rinascimento, recupera le forme dei generi classici greco-latini e sfrutta la forza vivente delle pièces teatrali francesi. La mescolanza di tutti questi materiali produce una poetica coerente, volta al potenziamento della visione del mondo, che trova nella teatralità la sua evidenza più forte. Ribaltando la prospettiva degli studi critici precedenti, il lavoro analizza l’opera secondo un "découpage" delle categorie teatrali principali: il tempo, lo spazio, il pubblico, il testo e l’attore. Il risultato finale è l’emersione di una teatralità strutturale, diffusa nell’intero romanzo tramite diversi meccanismi: l’ambiguità tra diegesi/mimesi e tra lettura/ascolto, il dialogo tra narratore e lettori, la compresenza di pubblico e personaggi recitanti, le indicazioni di una spazialità performativa, l’importanza della gestualità e della vocalità, la musicalità teatrale della lingua, il lessico specialistico della messinscena, i temi del travestimento, del "théâtre du monde" e del "théâtre anatomique". / The dissertation focuses on the connection between François Rabelais’s Gargantua et Pantagruel and the theatre. Rabelais’s writing possesses generic characteristics, typical of the late Middle Ages and early Renaissance periods; it also presents generic forms derived from Greek and Latin literature, and is endowed with the vitality of French medieval theatre. The mingling of these materials results in a coherent poetics expressed through pervasive theatrical elements, and aimed at amplifying the reader’s worldview. Previous scholarly perspectives are here “overturned”, for analysis is built on fundamentally theatrical categories: time, space, audience, text and actor. Theatricality proves to inform the very structure of Rabelais’s work and manifests itself in the alternation of diegesis and mimesis; in the ongoing dialogue between narrator and readers/listeners; in the co-presence of audience and characters/players; in the indications of performative spaces; in the emphasis on gesture and voice; in the theatrical musicality of language; in the specialist vocabulary of the mise-en-scène and the themes of disguise, théâtre du monde and théâtre anatomique.

v anglickém jazyce: This thesis mainly analyzes the five-part novel Gargantua and Pantagruel written by the French author Francois Rabelais. Emphasis is based particularly on an inclusion of Rabelais's work in historical and literary context of the period of transformation between medieval and Renaissance society. More specifically, it deals with the author's humanist opinion and his critique of contemporary society, which is the main line of the work itself. The aim of our thesis is especially an attempt to outline the various possible meanings of the terms « road or path » and « stranger » in Rabelais's work and explain the role of these thematic concepts in the author's concept of criticism of society.