De la rhétorique des « nations » à la théorie des « races ». L’influence des théories scientifiques sur la pensée des stéréotypes « nationaux » (XIIIe-XVe-XVIIIe s.)

Abstract

The various “proto-national” stereotypes developed in the late Middle Ages from a complex mixture of topoi, partly inherited from classical antiquity, and folkloric motifs. The study of sources of a classificatory type cataloguing the qualities and defects of “nations” (nationes, gentes, linguae...) allows us to show how this thought becomes scientific from the thirteenth century onwards by taking the paths of medicine and scholastic philosophy. It also suggests the persistence of modes of thought and classificatory schemes dating back to this period in the thought of the modern age, raising the question of the scholastic background of the classifications of peoples and races operated by the thinkers of the Age of Enlightenment

Keywords

• identity
• racism
• rhetoric
• Nations
• classificatory thought