Abstract

Repetition has long been held to be a typical stylistic feature of sermons, along with the use of rhetorical figures of iteration such as anaphora, epiphora, anadiplosis and "complexio". This paper offers a characterisation of vernacular medieval sermons and a functional typology of repetition exemplified through the analysis of texts by Giordano da Pisa and Bernardino da Siena. The analysis provides an interpretation of the different uses of iterative structures as tools for cohesion, text articulation and management of thematic progression, in light of genre specificity and its metatextual coding in contemporary "artes praedicandi". What emerges is that the construction of sermons develops through incremental thematic progression and a process of clarification from implicit to explicit.