STILISTICA LEIBNIZIANA

This thesis offers a systematic exploration of the recurring stylemes in Leibniz’ works dedicated to the theodicy topics. The analysis answers to a triple requirement: to catalogue the most frequent stylemes; to track out of them the fonts and patterns and to identify their logical function and architectonic role within the text structures. The study is set up in three main chapters, which correspond to the three different phases in the evolution of Leibniz’s thought, likewise to the three orders of stylistics phenomena which the text analytics usually confronts with: semantic and notion fields, macro-level and micro-level figures. In parallel, the research conducts a critical confront with the literature dedicated to Leibniz tropology, The central idea of this study – which distances itself methodologically from the discipline called Literature&Science as much as from the theoretical presuppositions endorsed by Gilles Granger in his Essai d’une philosophie du style (1968) – is to borrow the analytic techniques used in the literary stylistics field in order to disclose the structures which are subjacent to Leibniz texts’ architecture. The research based on such assumption contributed to clarify some core issues of Leibniz philosophy among the most frequently debated by critics: the supposed adhesion of young Leibniz to voluntarism, the interpretation of two the labyrinths and theoretical persistent oscillations in the theodicy writings of maturity period.