'Mens Businesse and Bosomes': Bacon's thetical rhetoric in 'Of Truth' and 'Of Anger'

Criticism of Bacon's 'literary' Essayes (1625) has sometimes involved a process of excluding from their rhetoric the relevance of the human faculty of reason, appropriating that faculty, rather, as a factor more relevant to Bacon's progressive philosophical writings on inductive logic and nature. The faculty of reason, however, needs to be considered as an element of Bacon's rhetorical planning in his Essayes in order to account better for the sorts of responses he needed to engage in his writing context. That is, looking more clearly at the reasoning faculty with respect to the Essayes should help us to make better sense of the practical aims of their rhetoric. If the Essayes are seen in the light of the meditative tradition and its rhetorical aspects, Bacon's method of engaging rational questions and responses will become clearer.