Analogy and Anomaly in the Continental Renaissance: An Intellectual History

Abstract

This dissertation explores the tension between analogy and anomaly—two foundational concepts deriving from ancient grammatical and rhetorical traditions—and traces their intellectual afterlife in the Continental Renaissance. Focusing on the reintroduction and reinterpretation of these concepts by Petrarch, Bruni, and Montaigne, this dissertation argues that Renaissance humanists internalized ancient linguistic theory to negotiate evolving notions of authorship, language, and exemplarity. Through detailed case studies, it examines how Varro’s De lingua latina and Quintilian’s Institutio Oratoria influenced Renaissance thinkers in their effort to reconcile classical models with historico-linguistic subjectivity. Petrarch’s poetry enacts anomaly through iterative formal innovation; Bruni redefines translation theory by rejecting strict verbal equivalence in favor of sense and idiom; and Montaigne reorients language and thought around the idiosyncrasies of subjectivity, dissolving classical paradigms. Ultimately, the project reframes analogy and anomaly not merely as grammatical terms but as organizing principles for literary composition and intellectual identity. It reveals how the Renaissance humanist movement, often seen as paradigmatic in its return to antiquity, was also deeply engaged in conceptualizing rupture, irregularity, and linguistic historicism—thus offering a new model of how early modern authors situated themselves within, and against, inherited norms.