Background
Robert Burton was born at Lindley, Leicestershire, United Kingdom on February 8, 1577. Robert Burton was the son of Ralph and Dorothy Burton and the brother of William Burton the antiquary.
(One of the major documents of modern European civilizatio...)
One of the major documents of modern European civilization, Robert Burton's astounding compendium, a survey of melancholy in all its myriad forms, has invited nothing but superlatives since its publication in the seventeenth century. Lewellyn Powys called it "the greatest work of prose of the greatest period of English prose-writing," while the celebrated surgeon William Osler declared it the greatest of medical treatises. And Dr. Johnson, Boswell reports, said it was the only book that he rose early in the morning to read with pleasure. In this surprisingly compact and elegant new edition, Burton's spectacular verbal labyrinth is sure to delight, instruct, and divert today's readers as much as it has those of the past four centuries.
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Robert Burton was born at Lindley, Leicestershire, United Kingdom on February 8, 1577. Robert Burton was the son of Ralph and Dorothy Burton and the brother of William Burton the antiquary.
After attending school at Sutton Coldfield and Nuneaton, Warwickshire, he entered Brasenose College, Oxford, as a commoner in 1593 and in 1599 was elected a student of Christ Church.
Robert took the degree of B. A. in 1602, M. A. in 1605, and B. D. in 1616.
His work was first published in 1621, and later editions (1624, 1628, 1632, 1638, and 1651) incorporated Burton's revisions. Burton declared that he wrote the book in order to escape the ravages of this disease, which he may have inherited from his mother and her family, and it is likely that he was also influenced by her interest in medicine.
Its modern relevance would be obvious if it were retitled "An Analysis of the Blues" or "The Psychology and Cure of Depression.
"In the Anatomy Burton uses the device of a fictitious author, Democritus Junior.
Imbalance makes a man phlegmatic, sanguine, choleric, or if the excess is black bile, melancholy.
The melancholy man could be introspective like Hamlet, or mildly eccentric and able to enjoy a good cry like Jacques in Shakespeare's As You Like It, or healthily contemplative like Milton's II Penseroso.
Next, larding his text with quotations from "authorities, " Burton explores the cures of melancholy.
His style and persona owe a debt to Montaigne, his satire of Erasmus.
Later, he held three benefices in the church, being made vicar of St. Thomas's, Oxford, in 1616, rector of Walesby, Lincolnshire, in 1624, a living which he resigned in 1631, and rector of Segrave, Leicestershire, some years later.
The Anatomy is a vast compendium of learning on the subject of melancholia, drawn from all available sources, ancient and modern, and ordered in a carefully systematized presentation.
In spite of the waywardness of the style and the writer's uncritical acceptance of authority, it is a work of serious scientific merit which was once characterized by Sir William Osler as the greatest medical treatise written by a layman.
(One of the major documents of modern European civilizatio...)
Robert advocates a planned, capitalistic society which makes maximum use of resources of men and materials, and he cogently analyzes England's faults, treating them as a sort of national melancholia. Burton then presents an exhaustive medical analysis of the disease of melancholy based on the old theory that a healthy body contains a proper balance of four "humors, " or fluids: phlegm, blood, choler, and black bile.
Robert was a bright conversationalist, took delight in nature, and enjoyed visits to relatives and friends.