The Anatomy of Melancholy

by Robert Burton, Angus Gowland (Editor)

Overview

'The best book ever written' Nicholas Lezard, Guardian

Robert Burton's labyrinthine, beguiling, playful masterpiece is his attempt to 'anatomize and cut up' every aspect of the condition of melancholy, from which he had suffered throughout his life. Ranging over beauty, digestion, the planets, alcohol, goblins, kissing, poetry and the restorative power of books, among many other things, The Anatomy of Melancholy has fascinated figures from Samuel Johnson to Jorge Luis Borges since the seventeenth century, and remains an incomparable examination of the human condition in all its flawed, endless variety.

Edited with an introduction by Angus Gowland

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780141395234
Publisher:	Penguin UK
Publication date:	07/01/2021
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	1376
Sales rank:	831,126
File size:	11 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.

About the Author

Robert Burton (1577-1640) spent most of his life in Oxford, first as a student and later as a scholar. His most famous work, the enormous Anatomy of Melancholy, was first published in 1621 and expanded in further editions throughout Burton's life.

Angus Gowland is a Reader in Intellectual History at University College London.

Table of Contents

	Introduction	vii
	Introduction to the 1932 Edition	xvii
	Note on the Text	xxx
	The Anatomy of Melancholy
	Democritus Junior to His Book	3
	The Argument of the Frontispiece	7
	The Author's Abstract of Melancholy	11
	Democritus Junior to the Reader	15
	To the Reader who Employs His Leisure Ill	124
	The First Partition
	The Synopsis of the First Partition	126
Section 1.	Of Diseases in General, and of Melancholy; with a Digression of Anatomy	130
Section 2.	Causes of Melancholy; with a Digression of Spirits	177
Section 3.	Symptoms of Melancholy	382
Section 4.	Prognostics of Melancholy	429
	Notes	441
	The Second Partition
	The Synopsis of the Second Partition	1
Section 1.	Cure of Melancholy in General	5
Section 2.	Diet, etc., Rectified; with a Digression of Air	21
Section 3.	A Digression of Remedies against Discontents	126
Section 4.	Medicinal and Chirurgical Remedies	207
Section 5.	Particular Cures	235
	Notes	262
	The Third Partition
	The Synopsis of the Third Partition	1
Section 1.	Love and Its Objects	3
Section 2.	Love-Melancholy	40
Section 3.	Jealousy	257
Section 4.	Religious Melancholy	311
	Notes	433
	Glossary	505
	Index	521

Editorial Reviews

<:st>This work is cited in It is one of the major documents of modern European civilization, a survey not only of melancholy in all its myriad forms, but also of humanity's endless efforts to assuage it. First published in 1621, the book was an immediate popular success. The New York Review Books edition was edited by Holbrook Jackson in 1932. This new edition contains a new introduction by William Gass, director of the International Writer's Center. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Booknews

"As impressively prepared as Volume I; those seeking the 'purest' text of Burton's masterpiece will find here the end of their search. The editors are to be commended, again, for their continuing care for detail, acute observation, and fine sense of presenting not only the definitive but, in terms of critical apparati, but a very useful text."—The Sixteenth Century Journal

From the Publisher