In 1575, the Spanish physician Juan Huarte recorded an encounter with a “rude countrie fellow who made very eloquent discourse” after becoming frantic. According to Huarte, this oratory sprang directly from the man’s fevered state.
In a free public lecture Wednesday, English professor Stephen Pender takes seriously Huarte’s assertion — eloquence is a matter of heat rather than cognition, imagination or memory — and explores an ensemble of neglected ideas in early modern medicine and rhetoric.