"The Power of the Broken: Sir Thomas Browne’s Religio Medici and Aphoristic Writing"

Whereas seeking the generic affiliations and mixtures of Religio Medici has helped us to make sense of certain features of its dazzling intricacies, it has neglected to consider the shape in which the eight extant manuscripts have come to us. Especially in two manuscripts whose provenance links them closely to Browne himself, the text of Religio Medici is broken into smaller portions of prose than are found in the print editions from 1642 onward. Considered together with the fact that in the first manuscript stage of composition, but also in the 1643 authorized edition Browne divides his meditations by numbers rather than titles, this brokenness prompts us to consider the possibility that the mode if not the genres of Religio Medici was intended by the author and received by its earliest readers aphoristically.