Scholastic genre scripts in English medical writing 1375–1800

Late medieval scientific and medical writing had several different genres and levels of writing from the beginning. Learned genres, including commentaries, were introduced into English with the vernacularization boom. The Latin “genre script” lists ancient authorities’ opinions of a topic, finishing with the commentator’s own. Writing conventions were adopted with a time lag, and fully-fletched commentaries emerge when the heyday of Scholasticism was already over. Research became increasingly based on observation and new top genres were based on empirical science. This chapter traces generic features derived from Scholasticism with genre dynamics and meaning-making practices at center stage. The material comes from medical corpora with background metadata.