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Galien et le “discours de la méthode”: rhétorique (s) médicale (s) à l’époque romaine

This article explores the multiple facets of rhetoric in Galen’s works. Reading Galen under a rhetorical angle reveals his outstanding linguistic and rhetorical skills, and demonstrates Galen’s versatility in dealing with actual and potential audiences and readerships. This paper uses both ancient and modern rhetorical and linguistic frameworks to show that Galen’s oeuvre, for all its enormity and diversity, can be read through the prism of audience construction and genre. In argumentative contexts, Galen also exploits the ambivalent construction of demonstration as ‘plausible’ to use persuasive, rhetorical strategies in addition to, or instead of dialectic.