Argomentare parlando e parlare argomentando: la polisemia della parola ‘argomento’ nella Divina Commedia

Abstract

This paper proposes a semantic analysis of the word ‘argomento’ in Dante’s Divine Comedy, from the perspective of argumentation theory. The term ‘argomento’, polysemous since its Latin origins, in addition to indicating the topic of a discourse, is part of the technical lexicon of argumentation. The results of the analysis show that i) the meanings associated with the term
in the Divine Comedy always have a meta-argumentative value and are mutually metonymically connected; ii) there has been a progressive semantic intratextual change of the term in the three cantiche from indicator of pragmatic argumentation to indicator of knowledge argumentation. 
Finally, the analysis of the inferential configuration activated by the term in Paradise XXVI sheds light on the complex relationship between faith and reason underlying the entire work.