Customer Reviews
Hand me the Anatomy and leave me to my abominable devices - By: allenrogerj@hotmail.com, 18 Jun 2001 
A source for Keats. Coleridge & the other romantics, the first confessional bookin English, a crash-coursein 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.
A hotch-potch, deceptively organised treatise on melancholy. - By: , 04 Jun 2000 Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy was the pinnacle of the trend for treatisesin the 17th century. This wide-ranging tome speculates on the causes & effects of melancholy, &in so doing broaches many social & historical questionsin an idiosyncratic & anecdotal style.
From time to time, Burton was afflicted by melancholy & he confessesin 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 & the end result does have an air of jumble & deliberate confusion about it, but this is one of its greatest charms. However, it runs to half a million words, & is therefore, no haphazardly slapped together pamphlet.
The chapter titles of the book are intriguing enoughin their own right: 'Self-Love, Pride, Vainglory'; 'Stories of Possession' & 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 & do without our breakfasts?" & 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 & describes various kinds of melancholy; the second puts forward various cures; & the third analyses love melancholy & religious melancholy. Each has a distinct air about it; the first is quite straightforward & discursivein tone, beginning at the beginning with 'Man's Fall'. The second portion draws on many of the scientific hypotheses of the time, & old & new philosophies; & the last of the three is the most contemplativein 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.'".
