When the tongue slips it tells the truth’

The lapsus, like gossip and nonsense, is a type of language that exceeds – or claims to exceed – the speaker's intent. This article investigates various manifestations of the lapsus in Renaissance discourse: does it pertain to the speaker or the hearer? What are the frontiers between the lapsus and the pun? What criteria separate speaking without thinking from speaking deliberately, an innocent mistake from calculated duplicity? Indeed, there are cases of false lapsus, orchestrated to give free rein to transgressive statements. In these there is a deliberate use of apparent unawareness for strategic purposes. In the sixteenth century, authorial intention was challenged by a new category, authorial inattention , which was developed as a means to escape the censors. The phenomenon takes on new importance during the Renaissance owing to technological advances in translating and fixing discourse, and also to the disciplining of European society, in which conduct books rein in impulsive expression by dictating increasingly strict codes of behaviour and speech. Many were interested in language that moved out of control, particularly in a religious, legal or political context. The lapsus cannot be viewed as a harmless lack of rigour: it becomes a real threat when fixed in print, ensuring a wide circulation

Aesthetics · Art · Context (archaeology · Epistemology · Gossip · Linguistics · Literature · Mistake · Political science · Politics · Rigour · Sociology · The Renaissance · Historical Legal Studies and Society · Historical Linguistics and Language Studies · History · Law · Philosophy · Renaissance and Early Modern Studies

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