Ideologia e storia nell’opera di Georges Dumézil

Abstract

This article aims at investigating the trifunctional theory developed by Georges Dumézil in the framework of the xx century debate on these questions. By focusing on Dumézil’s relevant passages, it will investigate to what extent the beginning of the 50’s were a turning point, allowing him to overcome many methodological problems. Dumézil was conscious of the possible aporia between the proto-historic origins of the Indo-European trifunctional ideology, and its permanence in very different historical contexts. Critics often maintain that the French scholar solved this issue by ascribing to the ideology an absolute independence from the social realities. This article will show, instead, that the essential problem perceived by Dumézil concerns the relationship between the ideological structure and history. Dumézil did not accept neither a-historical explanations nor genetic theories. He also realized that the hypothesis of the existence of an Indo-European literary tradition, and its possible “survivance” among different cultures, could not account for precise ideological structures. The conclusion is that Dumézil, as a scholar of the fringe of the ultra-history, never renounced to be a distinctive inquirer of the historical processes.