ABSTRACT
Early in the Baconian era, Bacon's most astute followers began to capitalize on his startling reformulation of traditional gender and nature mythology. To speak of the birth of a "feminine" mind in either Francis Bacon or his followers initially seems to be a contradiction in terms. Much the same analysis appears in Bacon's rhetoric, which accuses the Ancients of deliberately establishing a "kind of contract of error between the deliverer and the receiver" of knowledge. Bacon specifically associates the empirical aspect of this recovery with the work of feminine words, which in the form of true eloquence frees masculine reason by winning "the Imagination from the Affection's part". Abandoning Bacon's handmaidenly model of the feminine mind for the traditional masculine glory of penetrating "naked truth", "vulgar Baconians" seek a courtesan who will freely "open" herself to the sons of science without any of the obligations of holy wedlock.
