Author’s name:
Maria S. Yakovleva – Saint Petersburg State University, Saint Petersburg, Russia
Abstract:
Medical writings preserved in Anglo-Saxon manuscripts of the tenth through twelfth centuries reflect early medieval conceptions of the causes and treatment of disease and encompass a variety of textual genres. In some of these texts, health is not the central topic but nevertheless becomes an object of reflection, making it necessary to clarify the status of such texts within the genre system of Old English medical writing. The material for the study consists of eighty-seven Old English health prognostics drawn from eleventh-century prognostic texts preserved in several manuscripts. For comparative purposes, the analysis also incorporates medical recipes from Bald’s Leechbook (first half of the tenth century). The aim of the article is to determine the genre characteristics of health prognostics and their place within the genre system of Old English medical texts. The study employs contextual-interpretive analysis and communicative-pragmatic analysis of speech genres. The analysis demonstrates that the structure of a health prognostic invariably comprises two causally related components: an event (X) and an outcome (Y) associated with health. Syntactically, this causal relationship is expressed by means of constructions denoting time, condition, or correlation. Health prognostics resemble medical texts in several features of the communicative situation: both involve mediated communication on a medical topic in which the participants share an understanding of health as the supreme value and recognize the greater authority and expertise of the addresser in comparison with the addressee. Unlike medical texts, however, health prognostics are character-ized primarily by an informative rather than an instructive communicative orientation. On the basis of their communicative-intentional structure and the linguopragmatic orientation of the addresser, health prognostics may be classified as a peripheral genre of Old English medical texts. The find-ings contribute to a more detailed understanding of the formation of Anglo-Saxon medical discourse, reflecting the syncretic views of the Anglo-Saxons concerning the nature of disease and its treatment
| Section | LANGUAGE AND CULTURE |
| DOI: | 10.47388/2072-3490/lunn2026-74-2-117-127 |
| Downloads | 8 |
| Key words | non-fiction genres, transitional genres, Old English prognostic text, Old English medical text |