Dorothea B. Heitsch Livres

In this study, D. Heitsch examines fifteenth- to seventeenth-century French authors who treat writing as a process of medication and whose literary production effectively yields a therapeutic substance. Through reference to Plato, Aristotle, Galen, Ficino, and advocates of alternatives to Western medicine such as John Mesue and Leone Ebreo, these writers emphasize the material/gendered soul and the role of the body in cognitive functions, illustrating knowledge as a result of physical interaction. The study explores Hélisenne de Crenne alongside the ‘pneumo-physiology’ of Galen and the ‘dolce stil novo’, Rabelaisian anatomy together with the anti-Arabist Champier, and debates among natural philosophical poets on the transmigration of souls. The author also considers Marie de Gournay in relation to Juan Huarte’s humoral theory and Jean d’Espagnet’s alchemical philosophy, as well as Michel de Montaigne’s interest in Jacques Dubois’s Arab-influenced approaches to medicine.

This volume focuses on six topics of research that are particularly relevant not only for Montaigne's writing but for the late sixteenth the genre of the essay, its style, pedagogy, politics, religion, and historiography.One historical reader and enthusiastic admirer of Montaigne's texts, Friedrich Nietzsche, influences the critical approach of this study of innovative elements in the Essais . Nietzsche's attitude toward his literary precursors corresponds to the humanists' attitude toward their classical sources; it is the attitude of a double gesture - that of rejection, because it wants to separate itself from its immediate past in order to, then, search for ancient roots.Nietzsche was a great expert on the six topics discussed. With him as a mediator, Montaigne will be portrayed as a modern in so far as he takes up thoughts that emerge with the Reformation.