Milli mála - 01.01.2010, Side 258

not hesitate to emphasize the subjectivity of his judgements with the
rhetorical aim of attracting readers to his own position, and to obtain
from them a sort of ‘favourable vote’, to the detriment of galileo’s
opponents. On the other hand, the author reveals the denotative pre-
cision of his scientific language. One of the most relevant literary
aspects of The Assayer is the perfectly harmonic alternation of these
two typologies of language, an alternation which turns out to be a
symbiotic mechanism within the structure of the book.
But what interests me here is how the structure of galileo’s
attack in Considerazioni al Tasso (i.e. a critical essay, generally
considered among galileo’s less important works) on Jerusalem
Delivered is, in some respects, similar to the one he adopted in The
Assayer against the theories of the Jesuit scientist and philosopher
Orazio grassi, who published under the pseudonym of Lothario
Sarsi Sigensano. In two different genres – on the one hand literary
criticism, on the other, scientific treatise – galileo seems to present
surprisingly similar linguistic and expressive criteria. In addition to
the technical and objective analysis of two phenomena (a ‘poetico-
linguistic’ one in Considerazioni al Tasso and a ‘philosophical-sci-
entific’ one in The Assayer), galileo tends to dialectically ‘per-
suade’ the reader by adopting syntactical and stylistic choices and
specific rhetorical devices. Though chronological and substantial
differences obviously separate the two works, these choices and
devices present a common characteristic of crucial importance:
while in the past they were mainly used in literary works, galileo
adapts them in an original manner to the genre of scientific trea -
tises. In other words, the fundamental novelty in galilean writing
is that mimesis becomes an essential part of the ‘essay’.
Like authors of literary works of fiction, galileo is here searching
for balance between ‘standard’ and ‘deviation’, both on a morpho-
logical and on a semantic plane – that is to say galileo is properly
searching for his own style. In The Assayer galileo’s stylistic research
reaches a maturity he perhaps does not even achieve in his two latter
masterpieces.17 nevertheless, it is in Considerazioni al Tasso that the
expressive principles of that research begin to develop. Before taking
the language of the two works into consideration, it is worth dwelling
SIMILarITIES BETWEEn SCIEnTIFIC LanguagE …
258
17 Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems (1632) and Discourses and
Mathematical Demonstrations Relating to Two New Sciences (1638).
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