The Anatomy of Melancholy (New York Review Books Classics) | Robert Burton

The Anatomy of Melancholy (New York Review Books Classics) | Robert Burton | Take Small Bites!

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The Anatomy of Mel...

	The Anatomy of Melancholy (New York Review Books Classics) Robert Burton NYRB Classics, 2001 - 1382 pages average customer review:based on 21 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

One of the major documents of modern European civilization, Robert Burton's astounding compendium, a survey of melancholy in all its myriad forms, has invited nothing but superlatives since its publication in the seventeenth century. Lewellyn Powys called it "the greatest work of prose of the greatest period of English prose-writing," while the celebrated surgeon William Osler declared it the greatest of medical treatises. And Dr. Johnson, Boswell reports, said it was the only book that he rose early in the morning to read with pleasure. In this surprisingly compact and elegant new edition, Burton's spectacular verbal labyrinth is sure to delight, instruct, and divert today's readers as much as it has those of the past four centuries.

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Vivisect your mind

Where to begin discussing this book? How about again and again? For it begs never to be put down, and if finished (as if that's even possible) to be picked up again and pored over. Again. And again. And again . . .

It got Samuel Jonson out of bed earlier than he wished. It kept me up later than I wished, and still "reading" it in my mind over and over again, musing on the insanity of it - the brilliant, always entertaining, enlightening, LIGHTING bolts of language and thought crammed so mercilessly between two covers. It won't drive you mad, though, or mess with your humours, unless, of course, a sense of one you don't have - a bricolage (I think) to be devoured ravenously and chewed interminably like an everlasting gobstopper - a joy to exhaust your mind and body by . . .

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Take Small Bites!

There are many reviews of Burton's "Anatomy" ranging from the 'best book ever written' downwards. I have been involved with many editions of this work over the years, and have a couple of things to add to what's been so eloquently said. First, it's a reference book and not a novel, and therefore shouldn't be read in a continuous way. It becomes tedious and incomprehensible. Like grandma used to say: "Take small bites so you don't choke!" There are parts of it that are dated but much that is totally applicable today. Second, it is a book about society, and the hypocrisy of the way different people get treated:"A sheep-stealer is hanged for stealing necessary victuals but a great man in office may safely rob, pillage, and destroy, and be honored for good service, and no man had best find fault with him." This prefigures much of Enlightenment thinking and can be seen to relate to Culturalist Analytic thinking, like the works of Karen Horney. Third, it is a historical contemporary look at the Jacobean age, and even the Elizabethan world. If you're interested in the cultural climate of Shakespeare and his contemporaries, here is an overview of what was known and opined by a scholar. One wonders how melancholic he really was (in the modern sense) since the preparation and writing of such a compendium certainly requires motivation and energy, not generally associated with chronic depression. I would suggest the Preface and the Digression of Air as fascinating views of knowledge in the early 17th century. Even if you don't like it (which I didn't for about 5 years), it tends to grow on you as long as you go slow!

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Incredible..

I was/am unprepared for the depth of every detail in this tome. Insights from a far-away time march through the mind and connect with todays events and daily situations.

melancholy of anatomy

a remarkable and continually surprising read; a real joy filled with ideas and insights into an earlier age and a remarkable mind

reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5

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