The Anatomy of Melancholy

Even within its historical terms, melancholy is not a settled object. Burton assembles definitions, tests their scope and records disagreement. One usual definition associates it with fear and sadness, without fever and without an apparent cause adequate to the feeling. He then qualifies the formula: some of the people described are cheerful or bold, and fear and sorrow are not present in every case. Authorities disagree about which bodily parts are affected and whether imagination, reason or both are impaired. Classification produces further divisions and exceptions. The system is learned and elaborate, but its categories remain under pressure from the cases they are meant to contain.

Body and soul act upon one another throughout the book. Burton defends his participation in medical discussion as a clergyman by arguing that this mixed affliction needs both physical and spiritual understanding. Food, sleep, exercise, air and the passions belong within a connected account of human life. So do sin, conscience, divine judgement and the Devil. Natural and supernatural explanations can appear in the same sequence without being treated as mutually exclusive. To read this faithfully is to notice how Burton apportions causes and authority in a given passage, rather than assume that he is always making the same kind of claim.

The historical distance is sometimes widest where the experience seems most familiar. A compelling description of sleeplessness or fear may stand beside an explanation we cannot accept. An extraordinary anecdote may illuminate what Burton or his source imagined possible without establishing that the event occurred. His medical recipes likewise belong to the historical work. Their presence in a readable modern rendering gives access to his account of treatment; it does not turn that account into contemporary advice. The book remains valuable as an encounter with the efforts, assumptions and difficulties through which people tried to understand distress.

The shape of the Anatomy

Burton gives his abundance a visible structure. Three partitions divide into sections, members and subsections, with synopses that offer a compressed view of the arrangement. The First Partition considers melancholy's definition, causes, symptoms and prognosis. Before narrowing its object, it surveys human vulnerability and supplies an account of body and soul. Its causes extend from bodily constitution and regimen to passions, habits and circumstances. The Second Partition considers cures. The Third turns to love melancholy and religious melancholy, including the disorders of desire, jealousy, superstition and despair. This outline is worth keeping in mind even when the prose seems to have travelled a long way from it.

The architecture also permits an argument to grow beyond its heading. A discussion of scholars becomes an extended reckoning with poverty, patronage, clerical appointments and the distribution of honour. A consideration of air opens onto geographical and cosmological questions. Recreation brings gardens, buildings, spectacles, journeys and books into the account of relief. These passages are digressions in a literal sense, departures from a shorter route; they are also ways of testing how much of the world the stated subject requires. The reader can lose the local thread while still discovering why a narrowly medical book would be insufficient to Burton's purpose.

The digression on air makes the method especially clear. Burton collects reports of strange places and natural marvels, considers the earth and the heavens, and repeatedly asks what can be known. An answer may lead to another disputed question. Astonishing testimony stands beside doubt about the people who offer it. The journey offers intellectual refreshment, but it also exhibits the appetite that makes the Anatomy so large: every boundary of knowledge becomes an invitation to read further. The scholar who warns against excessive study knows its attractions very well.