Citcem – serie

The topic of this book is practical knowledge in early modern Europe, interpreted widely as recipes containing art procedures or medical panaceas between 1400 and 1700. In this book, the 1) origin or creation, 2) transmission or dissemination, and 3) use or consumption are key subjects for understanding the place of practical knowledge in early modern European society. After a historiographical and theoretical approach, this book applies Deleuze and Guattari’s rhizome metaphor to art technological literature. The first part ends with a study about medical practitioners and mediators who disseminate practical knowledge through the printing press. The second part of the book is entirely dedicated to the booklet A Very Proper Treatise (1573), using a microhistory approach to study it.

In the first part theoretical questions on the fictionalisation of reality are discussed. In the second part, the author studies national myths, from the importance they can have in regard to the general opinion held of the other to the way in which the literary text has modified national History. In the third and fourth parts novels by José Saramago and Lídia Jorge are analysed.