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Rhetoric and Medicine in Early Modern Europe

Rhetoric and Medicine in Early Modern Europe

Publié le par Thomas Parisot (Source : CFP)

Renaissance Society of America, Annual Meeting, Tempe, AZ
11-13 April 2002

In the late 1570s at Oxford, John Rainolds, lecturing on the Rhetoric, wrote that "Aristotle defines rhetoric as the power or faculty of seeing what may be probable in any situation." Rhetoric "does not create probabilities, but instead perceives them." Like the physician, the rhetor must be able to see "what may be probable in any situation"; perhaps, Rainolds concludes, "medical practice itself will become a part of rhetoric [.]" In 1589, George Puttenham recommended that in certain instances, particularly in lamentations, poets become physicians. Though there is some "joy to be able to lament with ease," it is necessary for the poet "to play also the Physitian, and not onely by applying a medicine to the ordinary sicknes of mankind, but by making the very greef it selfe (in part) cure of the disease" (The Arte of English Poesie). In oratorical theory, logic, poetics, conduct books, and fiction, the intrication of rhetoric and medicine is pervasive. Recently, Nancy Struever has argued for "a dual history of medicine and rhetoric," centring on cure and the passions, as a viable line of inquiry into early modern intellectual history. Given recent interest in literature and medicine, it seems timely to assess the role of rhetoric in medicine, and medicine in rhetoric, in early modern literature and culture.

Proposals (150 words, 1 page curriculum vitae) are invited for a panel on the relationship, variously construed, between rhetoric and medicine in early modern Europe (c. 1500-1700). Topics might include, but are not limited to:

- forms of inference in the probable arts and sciences, especially medicine,
- the function of rhetoric in early modern medicine, popular or learned,
- the presence of medical thought or medical semiotics in European literatures,
- medical thought as a paradigm for intellectual history (in the manner of Ginzburg, Allers, Curtius, or Mandlebaum),
- the rhetoric of healing, healing rhetoric,
- medicine and scripture, medicine and theology, Christus medicus redivivus,
- the role of rhetoric in the profession of medicine,
- medicine and genre (the anatomy, for example),
- symptoms, signs, and medical semiotics,
- rhetoric and the passions.

In addition to the panel, a collection of essays on rhetoric and medicine in early modern Europe is planned. Proposals should be sent to Stephen Pender, English, University of Windsor, at spender@uwindsor.ca, by Wednesday, 25 April 2001. Email inquiries are encouraged, as is electronic submission.

Dr. Stephen Pender, English
University of Windsor
Windsor
Ontario
Canada N9B 3P4