More than cool reason: John Hart’s self-fashioning as a linguistic physician

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ABSTRACT This paper aims to examine the medical metaphors in John Hart’s (c.1501–1574) two major canonical texts (1551, 1569) that sit at the heart of the sixteenth-century movement for spelling reform. In a previously published paper, I argued that Hart’s advocacy for orthographic standardisation and codification (along strict phonetic lines) is built on a series of tightly woven logical arguments with core medical concepts of the Tudor era (i.e. logos, in terms of Aristotle). Building on where I left off, this paper continues to argue that Hart’s advocacy for spelling reform is, more unexpectedly, also achieved through enormous efforts to portray his self-image as a high-level physician in stark contrast to his opponents. It reveals how Hart shapes his own image as a gentleman scholar-physician who is qualified for his undertaking and whose enterprise is well based on the pursuit of national commonwealth (i.e. ethos, in terms of Aristotle). It also provides a glimpse into how Hart’s antagonist, Richard Mulcaster (c.1531–1611) responds to his use of medical metaphors in his own linguistic work, allowing the examination of Hart’s linguistic thought to be set in a larger context.