Product Description: The second volume of Burton's masterful work, The Anatomy of Melancholy, this edition includes the text and textual apparatus for "The Second Partition." Burton furnishes the full spectrum of cures for melancholy, outlining and analyzing the symptoms and causes of the disorder in the same format as in the first partition. In the "Digression of the Ayre," he presents a remarkable synthesis of the cultural, geographical, and climatic influences on temperament, and in the final two sections presents extensive remedies from both physics and surgery.
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!
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
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.
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 . . .
Avoid this prudish edition resurrected from 1932 Despite translating thousands of worthless Latin quotations, the editor of this edition leaves large passages from the section on Love Melancholy, which Burton waggishly wrote in Latin, untranslated. Burton demands enough of one's patience; one shouldn't have to put up with this sort of nonsense from his editor, even if one's Latin is good. After plodding through over a thousand pages, the reader has earned a little titillating trivia. Also, if you've forgotten your Latin, Burton's notes are left untranslated. Finally, I'll say that although Burton is amusing, the book is too long with too little content. Go back to his sources, read Swift, read Marcus Aurelius, read Kierkegaard on religious despair; and then, if you have time, read Burton-- or skim him.
Anything Goes Trivia
Megaton Man
Trevor
