The Anatomy of Melancholy by Robert Burton
Hello and welcome to the Discourse. Robert Burton was an English writer, fellow, clergyman, and cleric of Oxford University who took birth on 8th February 1577 and died on 25th January 1640. As a fellow of Oxford University, he became the Librarian of Christ Church Library in 1624 and remained a librarian there till his death. He was a poet, a dramatist, and a prose writer however, most of his works have been lost. One of the works that he wrote under a pseudonym as Democritus Junior became extremely successful at that time and is considered a pathbreaking work even now. It was titled The Anatomy of Melancholy that he wrote as medical work. However, he was not a physician nor a doctor. Yet, he devoted extensive time and efforts to proper research and studies before writing this work and took the help of quotations and references from various previous writers, thinkers, and physicians to assert his views regarding melancholy.
The Anatomy of Melancholy
The full title of this work that Burton wrote under the pseudonym of Democritus Junior was The Anatomy of Melancholy, What it is: With all the Kinds, Causes, Symptomes, Prognostickes, and Several Cures of it. In Three Maine Partitions with their several Sections, Members, and Subsections. Philosophically, Medicinally, Historically, Opened and Cut Up.
It is a huge and encyclopedic book containing more than 900 pages that explores a dizzying assortment of mental afflictions, including what might now be called depression. Burton considers melancholy to be an ‘inbred malady’ in all of us and admits that he is ‘not a little offended by it himself. The main subject of the book is Melancholia which includes but is not limited to clinical depression. Burton produced this book as a medical text however, it is considered a unique text of literature because it contains a lot of scientific and philosophical content. Furthermore, to assert evidence in his support, Burton mentions a huge number of case studies of melancholia in this book which included some important historical figures, and some fictional case studies including protagonists of Shakespearean plays and other famous stories.
Burton printed the Anatomy under the pseudonym of "Democritus Junior", alluding to the Greek pre-Socratic philosopher, Democritus, sometimes known as the Laughing Philosopher. To address the issue of Melancholy in his book,
Burton drew from nearly every science of his day, including psychology and physiology, but also astronomy, meteorology, theology, and even astrology and demonology. He took inspirations from the Hippocratic and Galenic corpus, and the writings of the late first-century physician Rufus of Ephesus, Arabic philosophers, and many more. The Anatomy contains a summary of the medical doctrines about melancholy as they had accumulated from the time of the Hippocratic corpus through to the early seventeenth century—though of course for the most part it is not presented as a historical survey of knowledge, but rather a theoretical treatise with immediate practical application.
The book was published in five revised and extended editions during burton’s lifetime and it continued to be reprinted. The anatomy of Melancholy is divided into three parts with various sub-parts. The first considers the nature, symptoms, and diverse causes of melancholy. These causes range from God to witches and devils, poverty and imprisonment, parents and ‘overmuch study’, ‘desire of revenge’, or ‘overmuch use of hot wines’. The second section discusses cures such as exercise and diet, purging, blood-letting, and potions. The third section focuses on two particular types – love melancholy and religious melancholy.
Melancholy
While discussing the plays of Ben Jonson, we explained the four types of humors that were considered important in human life during that time. One of them is black bile which causes Melancholy. In the book, Burton mentioned that he himself was struggling against Melancholy as he says, "I writ of melancholy, by being busy to avoid melancholy. There is no greater cause of melancholy than idleness, no better cure than business.” Those were hard times of political upheaval across Europe. England was suffering plague and the tensions between Protestants and Catholics were at their peak. Puritans and Anglicans were also drawing swords against each other. In such a scenario, depression was a common problem that often people faced.
Burton classified melancholy into various kinds and one of them is Male and Female Melancholy. In this section, Burton examines the melancholy that drove Shakespeare’s Hamlet and also discusses the madness of Ophelia.
In the sub-section Maides, Nunnes, and Widows, Burton suggests that forced sexual abstinence can lead to melancholy. Burton mentions, “stale maids, nuns and widows, they are melancholy in the highest degree, and all for want of husbands.” He says that ‘noble virgins’ are particularly affected by “vitious vapours which come from menstruous blood”. He reports shocking tales of nuns who rebel against their “enforced temperance” and express their sexuality, leading to “frequent” abortions and “murdering infants in their Nunneries.” As a cure, Burton suggests that the “surest remedy” is to see them “married to good husbands” where they can fulfill their “desires”, and put out the “fire of lust.” At some point in the book, Burton mentions 'What have I to do with nuns, maids, virgins, widows? I am a bachelor myself, and lead a monastic life in a college.' But then he defends himself and suggests that a grown-up man like him with experience can offer the correct advice. Also, it indicates that his own ascetic life forced him to suffer melancholy that he to avoid by remaining busy in writing this huge work.
Burton devoted a major part of the third section to Love melancholy. Burton uses Shakespeare’s characters, as Sigmund Freud would do centuries later, as definitive examples of particular psychological types. For Burton, lovers who at first “cannot fancie or affect each other, but are harsh and ready to disagree” are ‘like Benedict and Betteris in the comedy’, Much Ado About Nothing. He claims that the best solution is to push the couple into marriage, so that love will grow out of closeness: “by this living together in a house, conference, kissing, colling [or embracing], and such like allurements, [they will] begin at last to dote insensibly one upon another”. Burton seems to sidestep the idea that, in Shakespeare’s play, the couple might love each other even before their friends intervene; we might see their witty disagreements as a subtle sign that they already 'fancie' each other.
Burton illustrates The tyranny of love over men in the following passage: "For an old fool to dote, to see an old lecher, what more odious, what can be more absurd ? ... How many decrepit, hoary, harsh, writhen, bursten bellied, crooked, toothless, bald, blear-eyed, impotent, rotten old men shall you see flickering still in every place? One gets him a young wife, another a courtesan, and when he can scarce lift his leg over a sill, and hath one foot already in Charon's boat when he hath the trembling in his joints, the gout in his feet, a perpetual rheum in his head, " a continuate cough," his sight fails him, thick of hearing, his breath stinks, all his moisture is dried up and gone . .. and very child again, that cannot dress himself, or cut his own meat, yet he will be dreaming of, and honing after wenches, what can be more unseemly ?" Similar invectives are' leveled against old women, who are just as bad.
Burton believes that Love is blind and irrational and says, "Though she be very deformed of herself, ill-favored, wrinkled, pimpled, pale, red, yellow, tanned, tallow-faced, have a swollen juggler's platter face or a thin, lean, chitty face . . . goggle-eyed, blear-eyed, or with staring eyes . .. have a sharp fox nose, a red nose, China flat . .. rotten teeth, black, uneven, brown teeth, beetle-browed, a witch's beard, her breath stink all over her room, her nose drips winter and summer, filthy long unpared nails ... gouty legs, her ankles hang over her shoes... If he love her once, he admires her for all this, he takes no notice of any such errors or imperfections of body and mind; he had rather have her than any womah in the world." Burton concludes, "there is no end of love's symptoms, 'tis a bottomless pit." Cure for love melancholy is first of all 'to be always occupied, seriously intent.' A lean diet is prescribed and young men should refrain from reading the Book of Genesis. All kinds of subterfuges are devised to put the unfortunate man off; think of what the fair maiden will be like when she grows old, ' one grows too fat, another too lean.'
The other subject of the third section is Religious Meloncholy, which is regarded as a branch of love melancholy, largely due to the concept held in Burton's age that the deprivation of love - God's love -was a cause of melancholy. He discusses Demonology in this section and offers a great many historical examples. Burton not only incorporated the spiritual concept of acedia and presented melancholy as a consequence of the Fall, but dissolved the boundary between medicine and theology—or more specifically, practical divinity—that his contemporaries had explicitly been observing. In one sense, this was uncontroversial. His remedies for the ‘Cure of Despair’ in the final Subsection contributed to the Christian ‘cure of souls’ tradition, and in many ways were typical of the Jacobean literature of spiritual comfort.
So this is it for today. We will continue to discuss the history of English literature. Please stay connected with the Discourse. Thanks and Regards.
No comments:
Post a Comment