TRENDS AND TRANSITIONS IN RENAISSANCE MEDICAL-TECHNICAL WRITING AND PAGE DESIGN: AN ANALYSIS OF TIMOTHY BRIGHT’S THE SUFFICIENCIE OF ENGLISH MEDICINES (1580-1615) THESIS Presented to the Graduate Council of Texas State University-San Marcos in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Master of ARTS by Susan G. Rauch, B.A. San Marcos, Texas May 2012 TRENDS AND TRANSITIONS IN RENAISSANCE MEDICAL-TECHNICAL WRITING AND PAGE DESIGN: AN ANALYSIS OF TIMOTHY BRIGHT’S THE SUFFICIENCIE OF ENGLISH MEDICINES (1580-1615) Committee Members Approved: Libby Allison, Chair Miriam Williams Dan Lochman Approved: J. Michael Willoughby Dean of the Graduate College COPYRIGHT by Susan Germann Rauch 2012 FAIR USE AND AUTHOR’S PERMISSION STATEMENT Fair Use This work is protected by the Copyright Laws of the United States (Public Law 94-553, section 107). Consistent with fair use as defined in the Copyright Laws, brief quotations from this material are allowed with proper acknowledgment. Use of this material for financial gain without the author’s express written permission is not allowed. Duplication Permission As the copyright holder of this work I, Susan Rauch, refuse permission to copy in excess of the “Fair Use” exemption without my written permission. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I thank my husband David and my two children Matthew and Justin for their support and patience throughout all of my academic endeavors at Texas State University-San Marcos. I thank my thesis supervisor and mentor, Dr. Libby Allison, who supported and encouraged me to pursue my research interests in technical communication. I thank my thesis committee, Dr. Miriam Williams and Dr. Dan Lochman, for their support and encouragement of my research. I thank Dr. Susan Morrison, who for seven years supported and mentored me in my pursuits of academic research and conference presentations in medieval literature and whose graduate literature course in medieval and modern waste studies led me to find and research the work of Timothy Bright. To Julie Good, I thank from the bottom of my heart for all her support and encouragement during the thesis writing process and for being a wonderful friend and peer during my last two years in the MATC program. To all the faculty and staff in the English Department at Texas State, I truly value each and every one who guided me throughout my seven year journey, first as an undergraduate and then as a graduate student. This manuscript was submitted on March 8, 2012. v TABLE OF CONTENTS Page ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS .................................................................................................v LIST OF TABLES ............................................................................................................. ix LIST OF FIGURES .............................................................................................................x ABSTRACT ...................................................................................................................... xii CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTION .............................................................................................1 A. Research Questions ......................................................................................5 B. Dynamics of Genre Theory ..........................................................................6 C. Biographical Sketch: Bright’s Professional Credibility ...............................6 D. Connections to Ramus and Paracelsus .......................................................12 E. Scope of Intended Audience ......................................................................14 F. Theoretical and Methodological Approaches ............................................16 G. Study Design ..............................................................................................21 II. HISTORIOGRAPHY OF SELF-HELP AND HOW-TO MEDICAL- TECHNICAL TEXTS IN RENAISSANCE MEDICAL WRITING ..............24 A. Study Models in Historical and Technical-Health Communication ..........25 B. Regulating Health Practices: Sociopolitical Influences in Medical Discourse and Bright’s Treatise .................................................................29 III. RHETORICAL AND TECHNICAL COMMUNICATION DESIGN THEORY .........................................................................................................33 A. Trends and Transitions: Stylistic Traditions of Rhetoric and Page Design .........................................................................................38 IV. FORM AND THEORY ...................................................................................42 A. Identifying Audience and Genre Types .....................................................42 B. Vernacularization and Utility .....................................................................44 C. Genre Forms and Theory ...........................................................................45 vi V. METHODOLOGY: ........................................................................................48 A. Applied Visual Page Design Principles and Print Technology .................48 1. Readership and Functional Purpose ...............................................48 2. Arrangement and Organization ......................................................49 3. Basic Principles of Design .............................................................51 4. Models and Representations ..........................................................52 a. The Sufficiencie of English Medicines (ed. 1580 and 1615) ...........................................................52 i. Non-Linear, Undifferentiated Prosaic Style ..........53 ii. Typeface .................................................................55 iii. Title Page (Ornate Title Page) ...............................56 iv. Typeface and Illustrations ......................................57 v. Headings and Marginal Comments ........................60 vi. Capital Letters and Italics ......................................62 vii. Word Division and Line Spacing ..........................63 viii.Table of Contents (TOC) and Indexes ...................64 ix. White Space ...........................................................66 b. Design Elements: Other Works in Vernacular English .....67 i. A Treatise of Melancholy (1586) ...........................69 ii. Characterie. An Arte of shorte, swifte, and secrete writing by Character (1588) ......................70 iii. An Abridgement of the Book of Acts and Other Monuments of the Church written by John Fox, abridged by Timothy Bright (1589) ...............72 B. Applied Qualitative and Quantitative Research .........................................73 1. Introduction to Rhetorical Analysis and Data Coding ...................73 2. Categorizing by Genre Type and Thought-Style Patterns .............75 3. Methodological Approach .............................................................77 C. Structural Analysis of Genre Types ...........................................................78 1. EMEMT Parameters .......................................................................80 2. Parameters in Discourse Form .......................................................81 D. Discourse Analysis and Data Coding ........................................................84 1. EMEMT Presenter® Overview ......................................................84 2. Content Analysis: Subtopics Identified and Summarized .............87 3. Discursive Events...........................................................................90 4. Discursive Entanglements ..............................................................91 5. Discourse Fragments and Strands: Context of Discourse Analysis.......................................................92 6. Surface of Text ...............................................................................92 7. Functional Rhetorical Analysis ......................................................93 8. Content and Ideological Statements: Bright's Argument ...............94 9. Discourse Position .........................................................................94 E. Synoptic Analysis of Methodology: Final Assessment and Interpretation ..........................................................95 vii VI. CONCLUSION ................................................................................................97 ENDNOTES ....................................................................................................................103 APPENDIX A: EMEMT Corpus Categories: Textual Representativeness .....................106 APPENDIX B: EMEMT Corpus List of “Parameters in Discourse Form” .....................107 APPENDIX C: Sample History and Physical (H&P) ......................................................108 Sample H&P Page 2. ..............................................................................109 APPENDIX D: Permissions for Images ..........................................................................110 WORKS CITED ..............................................................................................................111 WORKS CONSULTED ..................................................................................................118 viii LIST OF TABLES Table Page 1. EMEMT Genre Parameters ............................................................................................82 2. Initial Coding .................................................................................................................88 3. Coding