The Method

The appropriation of truth-carrying discourses is further explored in chapter four, “The Method”, which focuses on the specific techniques adopted from proto-scientific discourse and deployed by the Athenian Mercury to either judge the reliability of accounts provided by its readership or to lend credibility to its own statements. In the course of this, special attention is directed to the Athenian Society’s emphasis on and interpretation of rationality, its utilisation of paratexts and its ideological, Christian bias ultimately resulting in the dissolution of a strictly fact-based argumentation. Rounded off by an analysis of self-proclaimed factual texts like The Devill of Mascon or The Second Spira and the Athenian Mercury’s self-reflexive deliberations on the performance of factuality, the fourth chapter prepares the ground for the last section of this study by contemplating the functionalisation of fiction to illustrate not empirical but moral truths.