Interpretation and Meaning in the Renaissance: The Case of Law

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Overview

It is a commonplace of modern scholarship that there was no general theory of language available to Renaissance thinkers, and that studies of grammar confined themselves for the most part to the investigation of formal features of language. However, no community can operate without some shared assumptions about meaning and its transmission; and it is manifest from the plethora of works of interpretation at this time--commentaries, translations, paraphrases, editions, epitomes--that the practice of conveying significance was thriving, and giving rise to heated debates about correct interpretation in theology, law, medicine, philosophy and humanistic studies. This book investigates theories of interpretation and meaning in Renaissance jurisprudence. How do they relate to the institutions of the law, especially pedagogical institutions? What characterizes the most commonly adopted theories of the legal profession? In what form were they published? How do they relate to the principles of interpretation found in the trivium of grammar, dialectics and rhetoric? In what ways, if any, do they mark a departure from medieval approaches? How do they relate to modern canons of interpretation? And how do they relate to similar issues in modern semantics and the philosophy of language, such as speech act theory or the 'logic of the supplement'? An answer to these questions is sought through an investigation of Renaissance problems concerning the authority of interpreters, the questions of signification, definition, verbal propriety and verbal extension, the problem of cavillation, the alternative interpretative strategies of ratio legis and mens legislatoris, the performative functions of language, and custom and equity as means of interpretation. The theoretical issues raised are examined in the exemplary case of defamation.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780521415460
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Publication date: 3/28/1992
Series: Ideas in Context Series , #21
Pages: 253
Product dimensions: 5.98 (w) x 8.98 (h) x 0.75 (d)

	List of illustrations
	Acknowledgements
	Notes on the presentation of the text
	Introduction	1
1	Contexts	12
	The study of Roman law in the Middle Ages and Renaissance	13
	Law and its status in the universities	19
	Legal texts: genres, production, presentation, distribution	30
	Justinian's prohibition of commentary and its interpretation	50
	The defence of legal pedagogy	59
2	Interpretation and the arts course	67
	Grammar	70
	Logic and dialectics	72
	Topics and rhetoric	75
	Interpretation in theology and medicine	82
	The development of legal pedagogy	83
3	Theories of interpretation and meaning	87
	The self-evident text	89
	Authority and interpretation	91
	Signification, reference, evidence and its interpretation	95
	The method	103
	Definition, etymology, division	104
	Modes of interpretation: declarative, extensive, restrictive	114
	Words and things: propriety, ambiguity, usage	125
	Cavillation: interpretation in bad faith	135
	Legal fictions	138
	Literal, subjective and objective meaning: verba, mens legislatoris and ratio legis	142
	Illocutionary and perlocutionary force: performatives	158
	Nonlinguisitc interpretation: custom and equity	171
4	Parallels and examples	179
	Suarez	179
	England	181
	Semantics and the law of slander	186
	Conclusion	203
	Bibliography of primary sources	215
	Index of citations from the Corpus Furis Civilis	226
	Index of names	229
	Index of terms	236

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