A Cultural History of Aristotle's Masterpiece

描述(由申请人提供)： 我提议写下英美最经久不衰的医学著作《亚里士多德的杰作》的第一部历史。这本书于1684年在伦敦首次出版，立即获得成功，并在20世纪初仍在出售。我的分析集中在读者群体上，以了解这本书在英国和美国如此长的时间里是如何以及为什么吸引人的。我认为，这本书既是经典的，广为人知的是提供关于性和生殖的建议，也是灵活的，由印刷商和出版商进行调整，以适应不断变化的市场。这部各种形式的杰作提供了一扇难得的窗口，让人们了解大众的性文化，以及普通人与印刷书籍互动的丰富证据。更广泛地说，该项目建立了一个调查这些方言知识的模型，直到最近，这些知识一直是大多数医疗保健的基础。借鉴文化史的方法，我认为我们需要了解知识是如何在不断变化的背景下传播、消费和复制的。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): I propose to write the first history of Anglo-America's most enduring popular medical book, Aristotle's Masterpiece. First published in London in 1684, the book became an instant success, and was still for sale in the early twentieth century. My analysis focuses upon readership to understand how and why the book appealed over such a long time span in both England and America. I argue that the book was both canonical, widely known to provide advice about sex and reproduction, but also flexible, tweaked by printers and publishers to adapt to changing markets. The Masterpiece in its various forms offers a rare window into plebian sexual cultures as well as rich evidence of ordinary people's interactions with the printed book. More generally, the project builds a model for investigating such vernacular knowledge, the basis of most health care until recently. Drawing upon the methods of cultural history, I argue that we need to understand how knowledge was circulated, consumed, and reproduced in changing contexts.