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The Anatomy of Melancholy (NYRB Classics) (Paperback)

by Robert Burton (Author) "VADE liber, qualis, non ausim dicere, felix, Te nisi felicem fecerit Alma dies ..." (more)
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Robert Burton's The Anatomy of Melancholy is one of the last great works of English prose to have remained unedited. The present volume inaugurates an authoritative edition of the work, which is being prepared by scholars on both sides of the Atlantic. It will be followed by two further volumes of text with textual apparatus, and two volumes of commentary. Burton concentrated a lifetime of inquiry into the Anatomy, describing and analysing melancholy and its causes - devoting especial attention to love and religion - and recording possible cures. Primarily a scholarly study of morbid psychology, it is also a compendium of curious facts and anecdotes, and combines seriousness of purpose with a marked satirical vein. First published in 1621, it was a great success: four more editions were published in Burton's lifetime, in each of which new material was added, and a sixth, containing his final revisions, was published in in 1651, eleven years after his death. The textual complexity and Burton's extraordinary range of reference have hitherto deterred editors: this is the first scholarly edition to appear. The text is based on a complete collation of all six authoritative editions. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
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43 of 43 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars A hotch-potch, deceptively organised treatise on melancholy., 4 Jun 2000
By A Customer
This review is from: The Anatomy of Melancholy (Paperback)
Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy was the pinnacle of the trend for treatises in the 17th century. This wide-ranging tome speculates on the causes and effects of melancholy, and in so doing broaches many social and historical questions in an idiosyncratic and anecdotal style.

From time to time, Burton was afflicted by melancholy and he confesses in his introduction (Democritus to the Reader) that he wrote the Anatomy to relieve his own melancholy. It seems that the treatment was successful, because his contemporaries regarded him as a 'good-humoured pessimist'.

The Anatomy is the offspring of a bookish mind: Hallam states that it is "a sweeping of the miscellaneous literature from the Bodleian Library". Indeed, Burton devoured the Bodleian and the end result does have an air of jumble and deliberate confusion about it, but this is one of its greatest charms. However, it runs to half a million words, and is therefore, no haphazardly slapped together pamphlet.

The chapter titles of the book are intriguing enough in their own right: 'Self-Love, Pride, Vainglory'; 'Stories of Possession' and the reassuringly named 'Miseries of Scholars'! The latter chapter makes interesting reading for me - a poor, beleaguered 'scholar'. One quotation speaks particularly strongly "Hoc est cur palles? Cur quis non prandeat hoc est?", which Burton kindly translates as "Is it for this that we have pale faces and do without our breakfasts?" and perhaps more closer to the bone..."Quid tantum insanis juvant impallescere chartis?", which translates as "Why lose the colour of our youthful age by constant bending o'er the stupid page?". Yes. My thoughts exactly.

The work is divided into three main portions: the first defines and describes various kinds of melancholy; the second puts forward various cures; and the third analyses love melancholy and religious melancholy. Each has a distinct air about it; the first is quite straightforward and discursive in tone, beginning at the beginning with 'Man's Fall'. The second portion draws on many of the scientific hypotheses of the time, and old and new philosophies; and the last of the three is the most contemplative in mood, drawing more from conventionally literary sources. The end result is a lucky-bag, as Holbrook Jackson rightly states: "whether you are a plagiarist, legitimately predatory, or an adventurous reader, like Dr. Johnson, whom it 'took out of bed two hours sooner than he wanted to rise.'".

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29 of 36 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Hand me the Anatomy and leave me to my abominable devices, 18 Jun 2001
A source for Keats. Coleridge and the other romantics, the first confessional book in English, a crash-course in Classical quotation, the only book to get Samuel Johnson up before midday, a treatise on a disease which is also its cure...Robert Burton might have benefited if Prozac had been available, but English Literature would have been badly harmed.
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