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As a Lute out of Tune: Robert Burton’s Melancholy — The Public Domain Review

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In 1621 Robert Burton first published his masterpiece The Anatomy of Melancholy, a vast feat of scholarship examining in encyclopaedic detail that most enigmatic of maladies. Noga Arikha explores the book, said to be the favorite of both Samuel Johnson and Keats, and places it within the context of the humoural theory so popular at the time. PUBLISHED May 1, 2013 Frontispiece to the 6th edition of Anatomy of Melancholy by Robert Burton (published under the pseudonym Democritus Junior) — Source. Robert Burton might well have loved the Internet. His Anatomy of Melancholy, whose first of six editions published during the Oxford clergyman’s lifetime appeared in 1621, is the apogee of Renaissance scholarship — at once the summa of classical learning spliced and rendered in the vernacular for the delight of its early modern audience, and a dense network of embedded quotations, a seemingly infinite set of hyperlinks. This never-ending gathering of scholarship could seem a testimony to the ult

As a Lute out of Tune: Robert Burton’s Melancholy — The Public Domain Review Home Essays Collections Explore Sources Shop Support PDR About Blog Search Search The Public Domain Review Essays As a Lute out of Tune Robert Burton’s Melancholy By Noga Arikha In 1621 Robert Burton first published his masterpiece The Anatomy of Melancholy , a vast feat of scholarship examining in encyclopaedic detail that most enigmatic of maladies. Noga Arikha explores the book, said to be the favorite of both Samuel Johnson and Keats, and places it within the context of the humoural theory so popular at the time.

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