La rhétorique dans les écrits médicaux

Rhetorical Practices in Medical Writings and Medical Imaginings in 17th- to 19th-Century Literature

Conference 

organized by Sabine Arnaud.

February 6 and 7, 2014, 9.30 am - 6 pm.

Location: Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Boltzmannstr. 22, 14195 Berlin, Germany

This conference investigates the role of writing practices in the enunciation of medical knowledge and the use of medical knowledge and terms outside medical contexts. What is the epistemological role of figures and genres in the denotation and connotation of a medical category? How have cultural imaginings of pathology been constructed and displaced? How have the role of medicine, patients’ expectations, and doctors’ status changed in the process? Words provide a frame to see the body. They postulate a relationship of obscurity and transparency between the body’s inside and its outside, and, like anatomical illustrations, present a clean and stylized body. Focusing on the writing of bodily disorders and sensibility in seventeenth- to nineteenth-century France, Spain, Scotland, England, and Germany, we will examine some of the strategies and articulations of that process.

Attendance is free, but places are limited. For registration please contact Birgitta von Mallinckrodt: bvmallinckrodt@mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de


For further information, see: http://www.mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de/PDF/2014_02_06_Rhetorical_Practices.pdf