Syphilis : Medicine, Metaphor, and Religious Conflict in Early Modern France /
Deborah N. Losse.
- 1 online resource (200 pages).
- Book collections on Project MUSE. .
Open Access
"In Syphilis: Medicine, Metaphor, and Religious Conflict in Early Modern France, Deborah Losse examines how images of syphilis became central to Renaissance writing and reflected more than just the rapid spread of this new and poorly understood disease. Losse argues that early modern writers also connected syphilis with the wars of religion in sixteenth-century France. These writers, from reform-minded humanists to Protestant poets and Catholic polemicists, entered the debate from all sides by appropriating the disease as a metaphor for weakening French social institutions. Catholics and Protestants alike leveled the charge of paillardise (lechery) at one another. Losse demonstrates how they adopted the language of disease to attack each other's politics, connecting diseased bodies with diseased doctrine. Losse provides close readings of a range of genres, moving between polemical poetry, satirical narratives, dialogical colloquies, travel literature, and the personal essay. With chapters featuring Erasmus, Rabelais, Montaigne, Lery, and Agrippa d'Aubigne, this study compares literary descriptions of syphilis with medical descriptions. In the first full-length study of Renaissance writers' engagement with syphilis, Deborah Losse charts a history from the most vehement rhetoric of the pox to a tenuous resolution of France's conflicts, when both sides called for a return to order"--Provided by publisher.
English.
9780814273746
Syphilis in literature. Syphilis. Medicine in literature. history (discipline) religion (discipline) humanities. Syphilis. Histoire. Appareil urogenital--Maladies. Maladies. Organes genitaux mâles--Maladies. Organes genitaux femelles--Maladies. Infection. Infections transmissibles sexuellement. Maladies bacteriennes. Religion. Litterature. Sciences humaines. Medecine--Aspect religieux. Syphilis--Histoire.--France Medecine dans la litterature. Syphilis dans la litterature. Infectious Diseases. Health & Biological Sciences. Medicine. Syphilis History Female Urogenital Diseases and Pregnancy Complications Female Urogenital Diseases Male Urogenital Diseases Disease Genital Diseases, Male Genital Diseases, Female Geographicals Bacterial Infections and Mycoses Infections Gram-Negative Bacterial Infections Spirochaetales Infections Geographic Locations Sexually Transmitted Diseases Bacterial Infections Religion Treponemal Infections Literature Sexually Transmitted Diseases, Bacterial Humanities Medicine in Literature Syphilis--history History, Early Modern 1451-1600 Religion and Medicine Syphilis. History. Genitourinary organs--Diseases. Diseases. Generative organs, Male--Diseases. Infection. Sexually transmitted diseases. Bacterial diseases. Religion. Humanities. Medicine--Religious aspects. Syphilis--History.--France Medicine in literature. Syphilis in literature.