Anatomy of melancholy

The Anatomy of Melancholy Title Page

"The Anatomy of Melancholy" ( The Anatomy of Melancholy ; full name - "Anatomy of melancholy, all about it: types, causes, symptoms, prognoses and some drugs. In three parts with its sections, sections and subsections. Philosophical, historical. Simple and understandable ») - one of the most famous (and voluminous) works of English prose of the Baroque era.

The giant in-quarto volume of 900 pages was published in 1621 under the pseudonym Democritus the Younger. The “Anatomy of Melancholy” is divided into three main parts: the first part defines and describes the various types of melancholy , which at that time was still considered a real ailment like depression , and, moreover, is extremely common. The second part offers various types of treatment; and the third analyzes love melancholy and religious melancholy.

The author of the book, Oxford Prelate Robert Burton , continued to supplement and complete the book until his death in 1640. Initially, he set himself the goal, starting from the informal style of Montaigne's “ Experiences ”, to analyze melancholy, to study its causes and effects, and at the same time to dispel melancholy (both his own and reader's) with an entertaining story about it. The final book is encyclopedic in nature, drawing examples of melancholy from almost all areas of human activity and knowledge of the early 17th century.

Separate chapters of Anatomy are a bizarre enumeration of anecdotes loosely connected with each other, often presented with some humor. The text is replete with lyrical digressions that freely flow into each other like a stream of consciousness . Difficulties in reading are added by huge extracts in Latin from scholars of the authors of antiquity (in modern editions, as a rule, they are given in the English translation).

In addition to Robert Burton, the classic examples of English baroque prose of an encyclopedic nature, and also with a medical bias, were left by his younger contemporary Thomas Brown . However, unlike Burton’s careless, crumpled, chopped syllable, Brown is considered a master of exquisite, aristocratic, “brocade” rhetoric, replete with outlandish Latinisms .

The Anatomy of Melancholy was never published from 1676 to 1800, becoming a bibliographic rarity over the years, which did not prevent Laurence Stern from developing and simultaneously spoiling Burton's whimsical and eccentric style in the multi-volume novel Tristram Shandy (1759-1767). Anatomy of Melancholy was a handbook of the romantic poet John Keats , who drew from it the plots of Odes to Melancholy and the poem Lamia . Another fan of Burton's work, Jorge Luis Borges , put the lines from Anatomy as an epigraph to the story The Babylonian Library . A quote from Kepler , taken from The Anatomy of Melancholy, is cited by Herbert Wells as an epigraph to the novel War of the Worlds .