DOCSLIB.ORG

ROBERT BURTON's ANATOMY of MELANCHOLY by W

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
ROBERT BURTON's ANATOMY of MELANCHOLY by W I99 Postgrad Med J: first published as 10.1136/pgmj.24.270.199 on 1 April 1948. Downloaded from ROBERT BURTON'S ANATOMY OF MELANCHOLY By W. D. NICOL, F.R.C.P. Physician and Lecturer in Psychological Medicine, Royal Free Hospital; Physician Superintendent, Horton Hospital, Epsom 0 ' Melancholy is a kind of dotage without a fever, havingfor its ordinary companions fear and sadness, without any apparent occasion.' In i86i an article appeared in Blackwood, in fourth of nine children, in I577. A ' Grammar which the writer amusingly introduces Burton to scholar' at Sutton Coldfield in Warwickshire at the well-known British traveller, Leo Rusticus, first, after which he entered Brasenose College, Esq., who is visiting Oxford with his interesting Oxford, and then Christ Church. After taking a daughters about Commemoration time. They degree he continued in residence as student tutor must need do the sights, hence their visit to and college librarian at Christ Church where he Chrish Church Cathedral, ' the ugliest possible of spent the rest of his life. It is recorded that he was collegiate churches,' but at least a cathedral. Vicar of St. Thomas's, Oxford, and later he was are to the of in his own Here they shown what little there is see by given living Seagrave county. Protected by copyright. the verger, who points out ' in the north aisle, The Anatomy is dedicated to George Lord high up against a pillar, a small bust, with a Latin Berkeley, the patron of this gift; at some other inscription underneath, and a queer-looking time he probably had a preferment at Walsby in diagram stuck rather awkwardly on one side of it, Lincolnshire. Paul Jordan-Smith in his Biblio- which the young ladies will probably at the first graphia Burtoniana is responsible for throwing an glance take for a sun dial, but which is in truth an interesting light on Burton's secular life; astrological calculation of a nativity.' ' Burton, apparently this cleric and divine was for three sir,' says the verger, ' author of the Anatomy- years one of the Clerks of the Market of Oxford. formerly student of this house.' The young ladies This discovery was quite accidental, through the who conclude he must have been some medical chance purchase of a copy of the Anatomy, inter- celebrity, are quickly informed by the father, who leaved and loaned at one time to Professor Murray explains, ' Anatomy of Melancholy, you know, my 'for the use of the Dictionary.' The book was dears,' the takes the narra- previously the property of Mr. Parker of whereupon verger up George http://pmj.bmj.com/ tive, ' Yes sir, he was a very melancholy gentle- the Bodleian Library, who had noted the fact of man and is supposed to have destroyed himself, Burton's appointment to the Market. This is and that's his horro-scope.' The author of this important and gives us a clue to the non-clerical article tontinues to reflect how papa knows the side of Burton's personality and character. book is on his shelves at home, it lies there un- He died on January z5th, 1639, so near to the read; indeed how many Fellows of the College exact time he had predicted that idle rumour had it have any personal acquaintance with this book. that he hanged himself to prove a prophet. This is As a boy I remember the volume on my father's unlikely, as a felo-de-se would have precluded his on September 24, 2021 by guest. shelves. burial in Christ Church Cathedral. Before we discuss the book, let us enquire what Anthony a Wood, who as a child might have we know of the author. Unfortunately our known him, gives this character of him (Evans: knowledge is somewhat scant, though there appear (The Psychiatry of Robert Burton). ' He was an a few biographical details scattered here and there. exact Mathematician, a curious Calculator of We learn more from other sources; his brother, Nativities, a general read scholar, a thro'-pac'd William, who wrote a Description of Leicestershire, Philologist, and one that understood the surveying tells of his family, who boasted an ancient lineage. of Lands well... I have heard some ofthe Antients Anthony a Wood (I721) in Athenae Oxonienses of Christ Church often say that his Company was provides perhaps more biological material. Robert very merry, facete, and juvenile, and no Man in Burton was born at Winsley in Leicestershire, the his time did surpass him for his ready and dextrous interlarding his common discourses among them From a lecture delivered in I947 to the Listerian with Verses from the Poets, or Sentences from Society of King's College Hospital. classical Authors. Which being then all the 200 POST GRADUATE MEDICAL JOURNAL April 1948 Postgrad Med J: first published as 10.1136/pgmj.24.270.199 on 1 April 1948. Downloaded from fashion in the University, made his Company more access not only to his college library, but to the acceptable.' Bishop Kennett in writing of the Bodleian. One shudders to contemplate what Anatomy says, 'The author is said to have Burton's thoughts would have been had he lived laboured long in the Writing of this Book to in our time. At the beginning of the I7th century suppress his own Melancholy, and yet did but ' in this scribbling age' he deplored the mass of improve it.... In an interval of vapours he could books extant. ' What a catalogue of new books all be extremely pleasant, and raise laughter in any this year. ... As already, we shall have a vast chaos Company. Yet I have heard that nothing at last and confusion of Books, we are oppressed with could make him laugh, but going down to the them, our eyes ache with reading, our fingers with Bridge-foot in Oxford, and hearing the barge- .turning.' men scold and storm and swear at one another, He wanted to write the whole treatise in Latin, at which he would set his Hands to his sides and but fortunately for posterity his publishers in- laugh most profusely.' So much for our limited sisted on our English version. ' Any scurrile knowledge of this strange cleric, though he pamphlet is welcome to our mercenary Stationers doubtless reveals himself and records his many in English, they print all, but in Latin they will not frustations in the course of his treatise of the deal.' Even so most of the quotations are in Anatomy. Latin and occasionally the author breaks off into It was first intended that the book should be Latin for the space of several pages. His descrip- published anonymously. ' Suppose the man in tion of sexual perversions is not suited to the the moon, or whom thou wilt, to be the author.' English language ' I spare to English that which The first edition appeared in I62I under the I have said.' All prescriptions are in Latin, so pseudonym of Democritus Junior. His desire for that the unlearned reader will not be tempted to anonymity was hardly sincere, as he signed his practise on himself. Suggested reforms, long Protected by copyright. name to the postscript of the first edition and overdue, in the University are likewise hidden though it was withdrawn in subsequent editions, behind a cloak of Latin. the third edition was furnished with a portrait of Why does Burton write under the name of the author in the centre of Le Blon's title page. Democritus Junior and why does he elect to write The book was undoubtedly a success, ' The first, about Melancholy ? Before he actually deals with second and third editions were suddenly gone, his subject, by way of introduction there is a very eagerly read.' Though the author added many lengthy preface entitled ' Democritus to the alterations in subsequent editions, he found it Reader.' Apart from being explanatory and some- tiring: in the last edition to be produced in his what revealing, as far as the author himself is lifetime, he writes: 'Although this be a Sixth concerned, it is full of satire and wit. He models Edition in which I should have been more accurate, himself on Democritus, because this Greek corrected all those former escapes, yet it was philosopher was visited in his garden at Abdera by magni laboris opus, so difficult and tedious, that as Hippocrates, who relates how he found Demo- http://pmj.bmj.com/ Carpenters do find out of experience, 'tis much critus 'under a shady bower, with a book on his better build a new sometimes than repair an old knees, busy at his study, sometimes writing, some- house.... But I am now resolv'd never to put this times walking. The subject of his book was treatise out again. Ne quid nimis. I will not melancholy and madness, about him lay the hereafter add, alter or retract, I have done. The carcases of many several beasts newly by him cut last and greatest exception is, that I being a up and anatomized, not that he did contemn God's divine have medled with physick.' creatures but to find out the seat of this atra bilis His style is difficult and his arguments not easy or melancholy, whence it proceeds, and how it was on September 24, 2021 by guest. to follow. ' I resolve, if you like not my writing, engendered in men's bodies, to the intent he might go read something else.' ' I neglect phrases, and better cure himself, and by his writings and ob- labour wholly to inform my reader's understand- servations teach others how to prevent and avoid it.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Understanding the Humours Through Burton, Jonson, and Shakespeare Lindsey N
    Claremont Colleges Scholarship @ Claremont CMC Senior Theses CMC Student Scholarship 2016 The eP rformance of Melancholy: Understanding the Humours through Burton, Jonson, and Shakespeare Lindsey N. Betts Claremont McKenna College Recommended Citation Betts, Lindsey N., "The eP rformance of Melancholy: Understanding the Humours through Burton, Jonson, and Shakespeare" (2016). CMC Senior Theses. Paper 1368. http://scholarship.claremont.edu/cmc_theses/1368 This Open Access Senior Thesis is brought to you by Scholarship@Claremont. It has been accepted for inclusion in this collection by an authorized administrator. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Claremont McKenna College The Performance of Melancholy: Understanding the Humours through Burton, Jonson, and Shakespeare submitted to Professor Seth Lobis by Lindsey Betts for Senior Thesis Spring 2016 April 25, 2016 2 To my parents, who have brought me to where I am today; and to my brother, Caleb, who keeps me going. 3 Table of Contents Acknowledgements……………………………………………………………………....5 Introduction……………………………………………………………………………....6 Chapter One: The Seriousness of Burton’s Anatomy of Melancholy…………………....11 Chapter Two: The Caricatures of Jonson’s Every Man Out of His Humour....................39 Chapter Three: The Game of Melancholy in Jonson’s Every Man In His Humour…….51 Chapter Four: Visions of Real World Melancholy in Shakespeare’s As You Like It……61 Chapter Five: The Discourse of Melancholy in Shakespeare’s Hamlet…………………72 Bibliography……………………………………………………………………………..86 4 Acknowledgements First and foremost, I must thank Professor Lobis for the wisdom, support, and guidance he has provided as my advisor. He was there from the moment I showed interest in studying literature to the day I made the transition to becoming the Literature major I was destined to be.
    [Show full text]
  • The Declaration of Sports As a Via Media: Popular Recreations and Religious Conflict in Early Seventeenth Century England
    THE DECLARATION OF SPORTS AS A VIA MEDIA: POPULAR RECREATIONS AND RELIGIOUS CONFLICT IN EARLY SEVENTEENTH CENTURY ENGLAND By Christopher R. Steiner, B.A. Pennsylvania State University A Thesis Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts in History to the Office of Graduate and Extended Studies of East Stroudsburg University of Pennsylvania December 14, 2019 ABSTRACT A Thesis Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts in History to the Office of Graduate and Extended Studies of East Stroudsburg University of Pennsylvania Student’s Name: Christopher Steiner, B.A. Title: The Declaration of Sports as a Via Media: Popular Recreations and Religious Conflict in Early Seventeenth Century England Date of Graduation: December 14, 2019 Thesis Chair: Christopher Dudley, Ph.D. Thesis Member: Michael Gray, Ph.D. Abstract The conflict over popular recreations in early seventeenth century England arose out of the disorder caused by the social, economic, and demographic changes of the time. King James I and King Charles I issued the Declaration of Sports to protect recreations against attack from religious reformers. Most historians argue that the Stuart monarchs issued the declaration to assert their authority over the use of recreations. This thesis, through a close analysis of the Declaration of Sports and contemporary writings of the Stuart monarchs and their supporters, reveals that James I’s and Charles I’s recreational policies align with their ecclesiastical policies of creating a via media or middle way between Puritanism and Catholicism. The efforts to create a via media of sports reveal the conflict over popular recreations to include many of the religious, social, and cultural issues that led to the outbreak of civil war in the 1640s.
    [Show full text]
  • Introduction
    Notes Introduction 1. A Complete Collection of Genteel and Ingenious Conversation (1738), in Herbert Davis et al. (eds) The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, 14 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1939–68), 4: 102. 2. OED 2. 3. See Ricks’s essay on ‘Plagiarism’, originally published in Proceedings of the British Academy 97, reprinted in his Allusion to the Poets (Oxford University Press, 2002), pp. 219–40, 220. 4. See Chapter 1 for more detail on the lexicographical history. 5. Martial, Epigrams, I. 52. 6. See Stockdale’s An Inquiry into the Nature and Genuine Laws of Poetry (1778). Stockdale’s ideas about plagiarism are discussed in Chapter 8. 7. On modern ‘plagiarism studies’, see my ‘Plagiarism and Plagiarism Studies’, English Subject Centre Newsletter, 13 (October 2007): 6–8. The explosion of studies in this area can be deduced from two major studies published in 2007 alone: Tilar J. Mazzeo’s Plagiarism and Literary Property in the Romantic Period (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007) and Robert Macfarlane’s Original Copy: Plagiarism and Originality in Nineteenth-Century Literature (Oxford University Press, 2007). 8. My methodology is indebted to Quentin Skinner, ‘The Idea of a Cultural Lexicon’, Essays in Criticism, 29 (1979): 205–24. 9. It is worth stressing here that this book does not propose itself as a contri- bution to the debate about the development of copyright. My general view is that no necessary relation exists between issues of literary originality and those concerning the definition of literary property as enshrined in eighteenth-century copyright legislation. See Simon Stern’s lucid analysis of these issues in ‘Copyright, Originality, and the Public Domain in Eighteenth- Century England’, in Reginald McGinnis (ed.) Originality and Intellectual Property in the French and English Enlightenment (London: Routledge, 2008), pp.
    [Show full text]
  • Robert Burton
    Robert Burton, The Anatomy of Melancholy (edited by Sarah Knight) Robert Burton (1577-1640) was a student of Christ Church, Oxford, English author and Latin playwright. Burton matriculated at Brasenose College in 1593, but moved to Christ Church in 1599, where he remained for the rest of his life. He held three ecclesiastical livings at various times: St Thomas’s to the west of Oxford (1616- 1640), Walesby in Lincolnshire (1624-1631), and Seagrave in Leicester (1632-1640) but lived in college. Within the University, he acted as a clerk of the market three times between 1615 and 1618, intervening for University members in their commerce with Oxford traders; he was also Librarian of Christ Church from 1624 until his death. The Anatomy, a compendious work that details the causes, symptoms and cures for melancholia, was first published in 1621, and Burton worked on it for the rest of his life. A sixth posthumous edition appeared in 1651. A common Renaissance medical belief, based on Hippocratic and Galenic pathology, was that preponderance of a particular bodily fluid or ‘humour’ (blood, phlegm, yellow bile, or black bile) dictated personality, behaviour and constitution, rendering the individual sanguine, phlegmatic, choleric, or melancholic respectively. Consistency of argument is difficult to determine in a text as varied and intricate as the Anatomy, but Burton does appear to reason that melancholy’s origins are typically spiritual: ‘these chastisements are inflicted upon us for our humiliation, [...] to make us knowe God and our selves, to informe, & teach us wisdome’ (I, 124). Several sections focus on university life and the tribulations facing scholars, particularly (as in this excerpt), the hunt for patronage and the prevalence of fake intellectual expertise.
    [Show full text]
  • Anatomy of Melancholy by Democritus Junior
    THE ANATOMY OF MELANCHOLY WHAT IT IS WITH ALL THE KINDS, CAUSES, SYMPTOMS, PROGNOSTICS, AND SEVERAL CURES OF IT IN THREE PARTITIONS; WITH THEIR SEVERAL SECTIONS, MEMBERS, AND SUBSECTIONS, PHILOSOPHICALLY, MEDICINALLY, HISTORICALLY OPENED AND CUT UP BY DEMOCRITUS JUNIOR [ROBERT BURTON] WITH A SATIRICAL PREFACE, CONDUCING TO THE FOLLOWING DISCOURSE PART 3 – Love-Melancholy and Religious Melancholy Published by the Ex-classics Project, 2009 http://www.exclassics.com Public Domain ROBERT BURTON CONTENTS The Preface ....................................................................................................................8 Love's Beginning, Object, Definition, Division ..........................................................28 Love of Men, which varies as his Objects, Profitable, Pleasant, Honest.....................33 Love of Men, which varies as his Objects, Profitable, Pleasant, Honest.....................33 Pleasant Objects of Love .............................................................................................36 Pleasant Objects of Love .............................................................................................36 Honest Objects of Love ...............................................................................................38 Honest Objects of Love ...............................................................................................38 Charity composed of all three Kinds, Pleasant, Profitable, Honest .............................42 Charity composed of all three Kinds, Pleasant,
    [Show full text]
  • Scholarship on Robert Burton's the Anatomy of Melancholy
    Utah State University DigitalCommons@USU All Graduate Plan B and other Reports Graduate Studies 12-2016 Scholarship On Robert Burton's The Anatomy Of Melancholy Matthew Bishop Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.usu.edu/gradreports Part of the Literature in English, British Isles Commons Recommended Citation Bishop, Matthew, "Scholarship On Robert Burton's The Anatomy Of Melancholy" (2016). All Graduate Plan B and other Reports. 855. https://digitalcommons.usu.edu/gradreports/855 This Report is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate Studies at DigitalCommons@USU. It has been accepted for inclusion in All Graduate Plan B and other Reports by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@USU. For more information, please contact [email protected]. SCHOLARSHIP ON ROBERT BURTON’S THE ANATOMY OF MELANCHOLY by Matthew J. Bishop A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of MASTER OF ARTS in English Approved: ______________________________ ______________________________ Phebe Jensen Christine Cooper-Rompato Major Professor Committee Member ______________________________ Lynne McNeill Committee Member UTAH STATE UNIVERSITY Logan, Utah 2016 ABSTRACT ii Scholarship on Robert Burton’s The Anatomy of Melancholy by Matthew J. Bishop, Master of Arts Utah State University, 2016 Major Professor: Dr. Phebe Jensen Department: English The history of scholarship on Robert Burton’s The Anatomy of Melancholy will be explored in this thesis, beginning with a biographical background of Robert Burton and a brief description of The Anatomy of Melancholy. The overall arc of scholarship on Burton’s text began with a wave of early popularity in the seventeenth century, followed by a period of critical neglect in the eighteenth century when no new editions of the book were published.
    [Show full text]
  • “The Glass, the School, the Book”: the Anatomy of Melancholy and the Eearlyarly Stuart University of Oxford Emily Anglin Queen’S University
    “The glass, the school, the book”: The Anatomy of Melancholy and the EarlyEarly Stuart University of Oxford Emily Anglin Queen’s University , as a librarian, bibliophile, and academic, the Flibrary was almost literally his life, at least in his own assessment. In the engagingly motley index that follows e Anatomy of Melancholy, the entry he wrote for himself—“Burton, Robert”—instructs the reader that on this subject they may also see the entry “Libraries.” e changes the University of Oxford underwent during the Stuart reign, while Burton was there writing and rewriting his encyclopedic work, were dramatically refl ected by the growth of the university’s libraries, especially by the Bodle- ian, founded the year before James Stuart ascended to the throne in . e small “chained library” of the university’s clerical medieval past was transformed during the early modern period into not only one of the most famous repositories of knowledge in Europe but also into a major node of exchange between university and court, with the university relying on the court for benefactions and the court relying on the university to provide educated servants to the state, as well as to reproduce Royalist ideology. Burton’s own sequestration to libraries is one he sometimes compares in e Anatomy of Melancholy to a positive kind of imprisonment, one that functions more to keep the world out than to keep him in, and one he imagines in terms of liberty as much as limitation, a paradoxical argu- ESC .–.– (June/September(June/September ):): xx–yyxx–yy ment predicated on a valuing of intellectual freedom over other forms of mobility, whether physical, social, or economic—an argument that is ingenuous to varying degrees as the book unfolds Burton’s frustration with E A is a his own lack of preferment.
    [Show full text]
  • The Daily Religious Life in England of the Early 17Th. Century by W. H
    The daily religious life in England of the early 17th century Item Type text; Thesis-Reproduction (electronic) Authors Snyder, William Henry, 1911- Publisher The University of Arizona. Rights Copyright © is held by the author. Digital access to this material is made possible by the University Libraries, University of Arizona. Further transmission, reproduction or presentation (such as public display or performance) of protected items is prohibited except with permission of the author. Download date 06/10/2021 11:59:23 Link to Item http://hdl.handle.net/10150/553244 The Daily Religious Life in England of the Early 17th. Century by W. H. Snyder Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Vaster of Arts in the Graduate College, o ' the University of Arizona 1 9 3 5 Approved: ' £??<?/ *93 5“ 39 2~~ TABLE OF CONTSTTFS CHAPTER PACK I. INTRODUCTION .......... ........ 1 Purpose. Sects. Religion and politics. II. OP CHURCHES AND THEIR ADMINISTRATION .... 15 Exterior of churches. Interior of churches. Form of government. III. OP CLERGYMEN.............................. 26 Characterizations. Intellectual and cultural life. Duties and faults. Private chaplains. IV. OP SERMONS........... 38 Subjects. Construction. Delivery. V. OP CONGREGATIONS ......................... 46 Dress. Character. The church service. 99506 VI, OF "THE DAILY ROUKQT, ............. 62 Prevalence of faadly worship. Family services. • General theological Interest. VI!. CONCLUSION . ... 74 BIBLIOGRAPHY . ... .... 76 I INTRODUCTION The religious struggles in early 17th century England, culminating in the Civil War, were just as complex as those leading to the French Revolution. -Even ^arlyle made the grave error— grave because of his tremendous influence on later students of the period— of interpreting the Whole movement from a moral standpoint'.
    [Show full text]
  • Religion, Race and Bad Humour in Early Modern Drama"
    Bob Hornback SAA 2021 Psychosomatic-Physiognomic, Religio-Racial Early Modern Race Formations: The Phenotypological Synthesis of Greco-Roman, Old Testament, and Medieval Racial Thought Early modern Europe’s dominant racial thinking constituted a recycled distillation of complementary tendencies, with the result being a prejudiced predisposition to interpret perceived physical differences of a constructed “race” as revelatory of inherent mental, moral, and, significantly, religious traits. Consequently, “races” were understood as being different from the inside out, due to a psychosomatic correlation between soul (Greek ψυχή or psyche) and body (Greek σῶμα or sōma), where race newly bodied forth soul and religion, as soul and religion conditioned newly-racialized body. Obscuring this early understanding of race there remains a prevailing critical failure to recognize: 1) that Greco-Roman/Aristotelian-Galenic humoral and Old Testament religious paradigms of racial origin were compatible at least insofar as both assumed some soul-body correspondence, thereby enabling their early modern synthesis; and 2) that Renaissance race-making also updated and distorted Aristotelian-Galenic humoral theory to coalesce with Christian religious prejudices influenced by the medieval composite of “race-as-religion” or “race-religion” as an inseparable category. Renaissance humoral theory adapted as it was subordinated to religious prejudices and prior racial paradigms re- aligned in a much more manifest correspondence between psyche and sōma. Early modern Europe’s compounded conceptual unity of a soul-body relation, newly conditioned by religion, resulted in a potent, Christo-centric fusion of paradigms, one that formed a coherent, powerfully overdetermined ideology of race that enabled Europeans to exploit condemnatory religio-racial discourses against foreign races encountered via exploration, colonialism, and global trade.
    [Show full text]
  • The Romantic Robert Burton: Or, the Art of Forgery
    The Romantic Robert Burton: Or, the Art of Forgery Ana Sáez Hidalgo UNIVERSIDAD DE VALLADOLID [email protected] The art of forgery is, probably, one of the most ancient known arts, as we can read in Caro Baroja’s work (1991).1 Cases such as that of the “Paeneste Fibula”, Ossian or Chatterton’s Rowley are well known examples of invented objects or pieces of literature which pretend to be ancient. Some of these feigned works appeared by the end of the eighteenth century or the beginning of the nineteenth, so that this kind of forgery is often connected with Romanticism. In this milieu we find Charles Lamb, the author of the text we are commenting, entitled Curious Fragments, Extracted from a Common- place Book, which Belonged to Robert Burton, the Famous Author of the “Anatomy of Melancholy”. Lamb is well known thanks to his Tales from Shakespeare (1807), a version of the plays for children, and his Essays of Elia (1823). He was a close friend of Coleridge’s (whom he admired, mainly in his early years). It was Coleridge himself, according to Lamb, who encouraged him to write the forgery we are studying today: “He [Coleridge] has lugged me, for a first plan, the forgery of a supposed manuscript of Burton, the anatomist of melancholy” (Lamb, Letter to Manning, March 17, 1800; Marrs 1975, I). According to what we can see in our author’s letters, these Curious Fragments were written in 1800, although they were not published until 1802, in John Woodvil (1802); the second and definitive version was that of the edition of Lamb’s complete works (Lamb 1818).
    [Show full text]
  • Reading to Discover in the Anatomy of Melancholy
    ‘As Hunters Find their Game by the Trace’: Reading to Discover in The Anatomy of Melancholy Angus Gowland, University College London Abstract The critical edition of Robert Burton’s Anatomy of Melancholy, published by the Clarendon Press between 1989 and 2000, provided an invaluable resource for Burton scholars in the form of a generally reliable reading text and extensive critical apparatus, including three volumes of commentary devoted to tracing Burton’s sources, identifying historical persons, events and geographical locations mentioned in the text, and explicating obscure allusions and technical terminology. Since its publication, however, there has been little attention paid to the contents of the Clarendon commentary, which contains many lacunae and entries that invite alteration. This is particularly regrettable, because Burton aimed the Anatomy partly at scholarly readers who were expected to read his cento in a similar way to a modern literary commentator, primarily by identifying its sources and allusions, and interpreting their deployment and manipulation in the text. This article seeks to supplement the Clarendon commentary by extending and revising its treatment of bibliographical sources, persons, geographical locations, and textual explanation. In doing so, it exemplifies a mode of reading that Burton expected for his book. It concludes by considering the implications for our understanding of the intended readership of the Anatomy. The Clarendon edition of the text of Robert Burton’s Anatomy of Melancholy has now been available for twenty-five years, and the volumes of accompanying commentary for nineteen.1 The prior publishing history of the Anatomy was not a happy one. Notwithstanding Burton’s assiduous efforts to correct the proofs,2 he repeatedly lamented the errors that disfigured the 1 Robert Burton, The Anatomy of Melancholy, ed.
    [Show full text]
  • The Royal Martyr and the Usurping Tyrant
    LJMU Research Online Willie, RJ Sensing the visual (mis)representation of William Laud http://researchonline.ljmu.ac.uk/id/eprint/7565/ Article Citation (please note it is advisable to refer to the publisher’s version if you intend to cite from this work) Willie, RJ (2017) Sensing the visual (mis)representation of William Laud. SPELL: Swiss Papers in English Language and Literature, 34. LJMU has developed LJMU Research Online for users to access the research output of the University more effectively. Copyright © and Moral Rights for the papers on this site are retained by the individual authors and/or other copyright owners. Users may download and/or print one copy of any article(s) in LJMU Research Online to facilitate their private study or for non-commercial research. You may not engage in further distribution of the material or use it for any profit-making activities or any commercial gain. The version presented here may differ from the published version or from the version of the record. Please see the repository URL above for details on accessing the published version and note that access may require a subscription. For more information please contact [email protected] http://researchonline.ljmu.ac.uk/ Sensing the visual (mis)representation of William Laud Rachel Willie, Liverpool John Moores University When William Laud (1573-1645) was appointed Archbishop of Canterbury in 1633, he and his associate clergy defended episcopal authority by citing apostolic inheritance, but apostolic succession, with its appeal to history and lineage, was problematic. In parliamentary debates in 1640, both those sympathetic to the episcopacy and its detractors observed that appeals to apostolic antiquity presented bishops in ways that might be construed as popish.
    [Show full text]