Giordano Bruno. Il teatro della vita

This volume intends to present an innovative interpretation of Giordano Bruno’s life, organically entwining autobiography, biography, and philosophy; this work is based on the recent discoveries concerning Bruno’s life and the process of creation and dissemination of his works. One of the main features of this book is represented by the interpretation of Bruno as a great European intellectual, and by the insistence on the importance of his peregrination across Europe – from Naples to Oxford, Wittenberg, Venice. This book is a philosophical biography which, pointing out the peculiar connection between ‘man’ and ‘author’ in Bruno’s thought, on the one hand shows the intrinsic theatrical character of Bruno’s philosophical oeuvre, and on the other describes the deep entanglement of his personal experience and his persuasion of the universal extent of his own destiny, in a constant tension which dramatically explodes during the trial and when Bruno faces death. Examining Bruno’s trial, this study dissents from the traditional idealistic interpretations which are centred on the identification of philosophy and biography; in fact, the analysis shows that Bruno’s attitude towards death was very complex and tormented, and that Bruno’s decision to die was the result of a long personal battle and of the clear consciousness of what the real power relations were at the end of the year 1599.