Il mito del duale. Antropologia e letteratura in Wilhelm von Humboldt

Within the morphological system of some languages, the dual represents the relationship of mutual affiliation between two objects which form a pair by virtue of a permanent and necessary bond. In all likelihood Wilhelm von Humboldt (1767–1835) was the first to conduct an in-depth philological and philosophical investigation of the question concerning the dual. Throughout his lifetime he devoted a passionate study to the phenomena of duality – including, for example, the symmetry of body parts, the polarity of male and female, as well as all manifestations of love and friendship, including their literary representations. Humboldt considered the existence of the dual as the starting point for the development of a general worldview based on the idea of an original and creative duality of forces and forms. Drawing on ancient traditions, the idea of a dual pair becomes a veritable myth of modernity as the 18th century transitions into the 19th century. The myth of the dual not only provides an answer to linguistic problems, but above all engages with relevant historical-political and anthropological discourses of the age of Goethe. The present monograph aims to reconstruct the historical reasons for Humboldt’s interest in the grammatical category of the dual and suggests a new interpretation of important conventions of the classical-romantic period. In particular, it focuses on the intertwinement of different areas of knowledge (from classical philology to political anthropology to the theory of literary genres), which were able to develop freely in the dynamic and extremely inventive context of the late Enlightenment.