Antick

Use in the book

The book begins by making its author an object of theatrical curiosity. An imagined reader asks what comic or masked actor has intruded under Democritus’s name. Burton answers the challenge rather than reporting an actual stage performance. Soon afterwards, the “antick picture” in a painter’s shop becomes an analogy for literary reception: vain readers stop before the grotesque and neglect the judicious work. His immediate target is the appetite for arresting titles and novelty, not a general ban on imaginative painting.

In the account of the faculties, poets’ and painters’ “Anticks” demonstrate imagination’s force. Ovid’s house of Sleep and Psyche’s palace in Apuleius are retained as examples of creative invention. The same paragraph first describes monstrous images arising in melancholy, especially after a terrifying impression, but it does not reduce artistic making to illness. Its assertion that human imagination is governed by reason is expressly weakened to what should be the case. The later discussion extends imaginative construction to waking painters, makers of machines and mathematicians. Its claim that corrupted imagination produces every vice is attributed to “some”; the surrounding explanation of visions also combines imagination with demonic deception rather than simply abolishing supernatural agency.

The symptom catalogue supplies a more distressing use: “Antick, phantasticall conceipts” are imagined ideas or presences that people may fear, hear or think they see. The shifts between imagining, supposing and perceiving matter. They do not establish that the feared beings exist. In the optical discussion, by contrast, the apparent grotesques have an external contrivance: concave and cylindrical mirrors reflect a frightening image from another room. Agrippa’s accompanying note calls such representations lifeless. The continuation doubts a particular feat attributed to Roger Bacon because his optical writings do not contain it; it then says deception is mostly in the brain while still allowing the devil a role. An optical explanation of this example is therefore not Burton’s universal explanation of apparitions.

Finally, “Anticks” can be people reduced by satire to grotesque performers. In the attack on elaborate dress, men who strut and dance are compared to actors, butterflies, apes and grotesques. Burton intensifies Seneca’s complaint about bodily refinement with a gendered reproach. The word here evaluates social display, not an artistic object or a clinical symptom.

The spelling “Antiques” returns in the religious-despair catalogue: sufferers imagine themselves damned and encounter grotesque shapes among terrifying sights and sounds. “As they suppose” and “to their thinking” frame this account of their experience; its language of possession remains part of Burton’s historical religious-medical explanation rather than a verified supernatural event.

Related entries

Art and artificial: Emblem, the old related heading, is treated within Art and artificial.

Imagination: The faculty that invents and recalls fantastic figures.

Fustian and bombast: The satirical criticism of over-elaborate literary display.

Glass: Mirrors, optical devices and apparent figures.

Places to read

1. Democritus Junior to the Reader · paragraphs 1–2the reader’s challenge to the disguised author and Burton’s reply; the actor sense opens the book.
2. Democritus Junior to the Reader · paragraphs 1–3fanciful titles, the painter’s grotesque, and the contrast with judicious work.
3. Subsection 7. The Internal Senses · paragraphs 18–20imagination among the internal senses; artistic grotesques, the two literary examples, and the qualification about reason’s control.
4. Subsection 2. The Power of Imagination · paragraphs 12–14visions, waking invention and fear; distinguish Burton’s comparison from the theory attributed to “some”.
5. Subsection 2. Symptoms or Signs in the Mind · paragraphs 31–33variable imagined objects and persistent anxious thoughts around the fantastic conceits.
6. Member 3 Immediate Cause of the Preceding Symptoms · paragraphs 27–29contrived appearances, mirror grotesques and Agrippa’s lifeless images; Bacon’s unverified feat and the ensuing qualifications.
7. Artificial Attractions of Love and Incitements to Lust Gestures Clothes Dowry and So On · paragraphs 36–38perfume, affected movement and costly clothes frame the satirical comparison of men to grotesques.
8. Treatment of Despair Through Medicine, Good Counsel, Consolation, and So On · paragraphs 22–24return from the preceding digression to religious distress, the variant Antiques and the qualification of the sufferers’ experience; the continuation describes their sense of unbearable suffering.

In this edition

The three translation pairs retain their distinct constructions: “antick picture” becomes “grotesque picture”, “Anticks” becomes “grotesques”, and the complete phrase “Antick, phantasticall conceipts” becomes “grotesque, fantastic ideas”. The last pair translates both adjectives and the noun, not Antick alone. “Antick or personate actor” is “comic or masked actor” at the opening; the two adjectives contribute comic appearance and assumed role respectively. The reflected figures and the satirical human comparison likewise use “grotesques”. These contextual equivalents preserve a family of figures, performances and imaginings without replacing it everywhere with amusing behaviour.

antick

Printed “antick” (English; lemma).

A comic or grotesque performer.

Here: Antick names the supposed performer; personate separately marks an assumed character or mask. The imagined reader questions the author’s adopted Democritus persona.

Context: Burton stages the reader’s suspicious question, then answers it; this is theatrical self-presentation.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: what antick or personate actor this is

Modern rendering: who this comic or masked actor is

Alignment scope: Equal-scope phrase/construction in the paired body texts

Word and construction: The indexed form contributes the defined sense to this complete aligned unit.

antick · antick picture

Printed “antick picture” (English; lemma).

A picture of grotesque or fantastic forms.

Here: The picture attracts vain readers figured as passers-by; its novelty contrasts with a judicious work they neglect.

Context: The author satirizes attention to fanciful titles and visual novelty.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: an antick picture

Modern rendering: a grotesque picture

Alignment scope: Equal-scope phrase/construction in the paired body texts

Word and construction: The indexed form contributes the defined sense to this complete aligned unit.

antick · Anticks · local use 1

Printed “Anticks” (English; lemma).

Grotesque figures or fanciful designs.

Here: The plural names products of poets’ and painters’ inventive imagination, beside Ovid’s house of Sleep and Psyche’s palace.

Context: Burton’s account of imagination moves from harmful melancholy to artistic invention; reason governs, or at least should govern, the human faculty.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: their several Fictions, Anticks, Images

Modern rendering: their various inventions, grotesques and images

Alignment scope: Equal-scope phrase/construction in the paired body texts

Word and construction: The indexed form contributes the defined sense to this complete aligned unit.

antick · Anticks · local use 2

Printed “Anticks” (English; lemma).

Fantastic figures or imagined designs.

Here: Grotesques belong to waking invention, with an appeal to painters, mechanical practitioners and mathematicians; the following attribution of all vices to corrupted imagination is made by some.

Context: Burton compares waking images with preceding visions; the total moral theory is qualified by “Some”.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: Chimæras, Anticks, Golden Mountains and Castles in the Air

Modern rendering: chimeras, grotesques, golden mountains and castles in the air

Alignment scope: Equal-scope phrase/construction in the paired body texts

Word and construction: The indexed form contributes the defined sense to this complete aligned unit.

antick · Antick

Printed “Antick” (English; lemma).

Grotesque or extravagantly fantastic, qualifying imagined conceptions.

Here: Conceipts are ideas: some affected people imagine presences and sometimes think they see or hear what they fear. The phrase does not authenticate the objects.

Context: Reported symptoms within Burton’s historical melancholy catalogue, not a claim that every sufferer has them.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: Antick, phantasticall conceipts

Modern rendering: grotesque, fantastic ideas

Alignment scope: Equal-scope phrase/construction in the paired body texts

Word and construction: The indexed form contributes the defined sense to this complete aligned unit.

Further local use

Printed “Antiques” (English; lemma).

Citation key: antick.

Here: Antiques is a spelling variant naming grotesque imagined figures in the religious-despair catalogue. As they suppose and to their thinking frame the experience; Burton’s possession language belongs to his historical religious-medical explanation, not an independently established event.

Context: Burton returns from a political digression to the distressed person’s experience; the continuation describes perceived extremity of suffering.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: Bears, Owls, Antiques, black dogs, feinds

Modern rendering: bears, owls, grotesques, black dogs and fiends

Alignment scope: Equal-scope phrase/construction in the paired body texts

Word and construction: The indexed form contributes the defined sense to this complete aligned unit.

antick · anticks

Printed “anticks” (English; lemma).

Grotesque figures represented as reflected images.

Here: Mirror effects make figures seem suspended in air; Agrippa’s margin calls the images lifeless.

Context: Burton explains deliberate deception by optical devices, then qualifies the Bacon story and allows other internal or demonic explanations.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: men, divels, anticks

Modern rendering: people, devils or grotesques

Alignment scope: Equal-scope phrase/construction in the paired body texts

Word and construction: The indexed form contributes the defined sense to this complete aligned unit.

antick · Anticks · local use 3

Printed “Anticks” (English; lemma).

Grotesque figures or performers, applied disparagingly to people.

Here: The comparison caricatures elaborately dressed and affected men as performers or distorted figures.

Context: Burton’s gendered satire, borrowing Seneca’s attack on bodily refinement; the reproach is his, not a neutral description.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: Players, Butterflies, Baboons, Apes, Anticks

Modern rendering: actors, butterflies, baboons, apes and grotesques

Alignment scope: Equal-scope phrase/construction in the paired body texts

Word and construction: The indexed form contributes the defined sense to this complete aligned unit.