The Anatomy of Melancholy

The Anatomy of Melancholy

Unclassifiable, inimitable, clever and wonderfully idiosyncratic, Robert Burton’s vast compendium of wit and learning, The Anatomy of Melancholy, is one of the great works of European literature. Alongside Virgil, Aristotle, Plato, Dante on hell, Erasmus on despair and Machiavelli on laughter, Burton ponders subjects as diverse as where birds go in winter (‘do they lie hid in the bottoms of lakes?’), the effect of diet on nervous personalities (‘all sharp and sour sauces must be avoided’), the delusions of self-love, and the sublimity of tobacco. Although modestly proclaiming himself a ‘mere spectator of other men’s fortunes and adventures’, Burton understood the forces that drive men and women to lust, jealousy, violence and unhappiness. His springboard is melancholy, its causes and cures, but his book is encyclopaedic – ranging across philosophy, history, astronomy, literature, medicine, myth and nature. This 17th century cleric and scholar seemed to have read every major thinker that preceded him, and his pages overflow with quotations and stories from every nook and cranny of Western culture.