Giordano Bruno, Il candelaio: Comedy, Philosophy and Theology

ABSTRACT: Giordano Bruno (1547-1600) is perhaps the first European philosopher to have written a comedy, the Candelaio (‘The Candle Maker’). The play, one of the best comedies of the Renaissance, is set in Naples and satirizes three characters and their pursuits, namely, alchemy, pedantry and sex (in various permutations). This trinity of characters, I would like to suggest, maps onto Bruno's philosophical reinterpretation of the Trinity. The infinite, sempiternal, universe, the One Being though it might be, was merely an image of the super-essential perfection of God. In turn, one step still lower in the hierarchy of being, individual things, including human beings, were no more than transient aspects of the universe and hence “non-beings”. The three characters of the Candelaio, their pursuits and vicissitudes were imperfect–very imperfect–vestiges of the Trinity.

My main scholarly interests are in Renaissance Studies, particularly Renaissance philosophy and learning, education, cosmology and Copernicanism.

Institutional home page: https://profiles.ucl.ac.uk/9556-dilwyn-knox
Academia page: https://ucl.academia.edu/DilwynKnox

Participants unfamiliar with Giordano Bruno may find my entry 'Giordano Bruno' for the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/bruno/) helpful