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tension_toast's review against another edition
challenging
informative
reflective
slow-paced
Don’t know how to rate this
paromita_m's review against another edition
Unfortunately I am not feeling it at all and I don't want to read something because one "should". 🥲
ebeeb's review against another edition
I’m going to try this again when I’m doing better. For now it’s lighter, happier fare for me while I recover.
paddingtonfan13's review against another edition
challenging
informative
reflective
sad
slow-paced
4.25
quisby's review against another edition
5.0
Moby Dick, beside this giganotosaurus of a book, adopts the size of a fairly unremarkable minnow. Ostensibly a treatise on a humoristic imbalance, the Anat. of Melan. quickly emerges as an encyclopedic, bilingual, Rabelaisian treatment of human nature in toto.
In the opening section, addressed To the Reader, Burton manages to quote Seneca, Plutarch, Juvenal, Horace, Perseus, Pliny, Macrobius, Lucian, Plautus, Ovid, Philostratus, Virgil, Theophrastus, Cyprian, Lactantius, Lucretius, Plato, Josephus, Sidonius Apollinaris, Aesop, Diodorus Sicilus, Virtruvius, Alelian, and Porphyry (inter alia, no less).
Roughly a fourth of the text is in Latin, most of which consists of direct or paraphrased excerpts from classical authors (although Burton also employs Latin for grosser anatomical details and anecdotes involving interspecies sexual liaisons (which do come up)).
The constant interplay of Latin and English feels like a sort of Elizabethan Click and Clack, a sing-song dialogue that propels the book forward with incredible speed — remember, this is supposedly a medical text.
The result is a flabbergasting medical treatise cum philosophical tract cum thought journal cum novel in dictionary form cum mass quotational collage cum biblical redux.
This book defies generic reduction. It's an urtext for Finnegans Wake, but even that's mostly inaccurate. Calling it a proto-internet might be better. Maybe, if Shakespeare had written a modernist novel, this is what it would look like. Biblical redux works too.
The whole somehow exceeds the sum of its parts to such an extent that I'm still puzzling over why I liked the dang thing so much. It's genuinely unsettling. But unsettling in a starscape-on-a-clear-night kind of way. It's probably the most personable book I've ever read, like an old man relating telling stories to children on his knees, complete with hyperbolized wisdom, temper tantrums, passionate diatribes and a good joke or two.
Although Burton compares himself to laughing Democritus (and elsewhere acknowledges some affinity to weeping Heraclitus) his laughter and tears are ultimately kind. Laughter comes with a wink, tears mix with a chuckle, and the reader is left with an overwhelming sense of love, peace and hope for mankind.
In the opening section, addressed To the Reader, Burton manages to quote Seneca, Plutarch, Juvenal, Horace, Perseus, Pliny, Macrobius, Lucian, Plautus, Ovid, Philostratus, Virgil, Theophrastus, Cyprian, Lactantius, Lucretius, Plato, Josephus, Sidonius Apollinaris, Aesop, Diodorus Sicilus, Virtruvius, Alelian, and Porphyry (inter alia, no less).
Roughly a fourth of the text is in Latin, most of which consists of direct or paraphrased excerpts from classical authors (although Burton also employs Latin for grosser anatomical details and anecdotes involving interspecies sexual liaisons (which do come up)).
The constant interplay of Latin and English feels like a sort of Elizabethan Click and Clack, a sing-song dialogue that propels the book forward with incredible speed — remember, this is supposedly a medical text.
The result is a flabbergasting medical treatise cum philosophical tract cum thought journal cum novel in dictionary form cum mass quotational collage cum biblical redux.
This book defies generic reduction. It's an urtext for Finnegans Wake, but even that's mostly inaccurate. Calling it a proto-internet might be better. Maybe, if Shakespeare had written a modernist novel, this is what it would look like. Biblical redux works too.
The whole somehow exceeds the sum of its parts to such an extent that I'm still puzzling over why I liked the dang thing so much. It's genuinely unsettling. But unsettling in a starscape-on-a-clear-night kind of way. It's probably the most personable book I've ever read, like an old man relating telling stories to children on his knees, complete with hyperbolized wisdom, temper tantrums, passionate diatribes and a good joke or two.
Although Burton compares himself to laughing Democritus (and elsewhere acknowledges some affinity to weeping Heraclitus) his laughter and tears are ultimately kind. Laughter comes with a wink, tears mix with a chuckle, and the reader is left with an overwhelming sense of love, peace and hope for mankind.
italo_carlvino's review against another edition
challenging
reflective
slow-paced
4.5
I might have a slight preference for Montaigne and his essays, but Anatomy of Melancholy was so much more engaging and compelling than I thought it would be. I had a few realizations reading this book. First was that the science of Burton's time, though not as efficient or effective as our medicine, was very sophisticated. Second was how much knowledge was available to Burton. He is technically writing in the late Renaissance and Early Modern period, so not the Medieval period, but there might still be an impression that one's knowledge would be limited, but Burton has access to any number of texts and has an encyclopedic knowledge.
If nothing else, Burton, like Montaigne, feels like a knowledgeable yet compassionate friend sitting next to you to ramble, and I mean that in the best possible way.
If nothing else, Burton, like Montaigne, feels like a knowledgeable yet compassionate friend sitting next to you to ramble, and I mean that in the best possible way.
aegagrus's review against another edition
Giving this book a numerical rating strikes me as a somewhat pointless exercise; to read the Anatomy of Melancholy is to sojourn in the distinct literary culture of the 17th century. Four centuries removed from the relevant notions of readership, I cannot pass a fair judgement.
By the standards of any age, though, the Anatomy of Melancholy is a singular book. Its titanic aspirations melt away genre, form, or topic, and produce something entirely sui generis. To the modern reader, it is often a frustrating work, filled with winding digressions, extravagant inventories of quotation and anecdote, distended sentences which reach towards their meaning by heaping clauses upon clauses upon clauses. It is also an inspiring book. The reader glimpses both the force and intensity of Burton's polymath intellect (polymaths having been banished from our age in favor of "generalists"), and his sincerity, humanity, and evident good intent.
The Anatomy's most powerful feature is its irrepressibly holistic approach to melancholy. We have described and circumscribed depression as a clinical phenomenon; we look to the particular and the distinct. For Burton, melancholy is at once a political problem, a social problem, a spiritual problem, an environmental problem, a physical illness, and a mental illness, all of which he takes seriously. He is interested in the relationship between the patient, the patient's friends and family, the doctor, the medicine or treatment, the surrounding context, and God. This interconnection makes his work challenging and relevant to our era of neatly compartmentalized problems and solutions.
The Anatomy's archaic form also belies deeply sophisticated ideas about the relationship between physical and mental illness, the role of memory and trauma, the social role and limitations of medicine, and the infinite heterogeneity of mental illness. Reading and relating to 17th-century accounts of what we would now call depression is cathartic and powerful. Burton's warnings against the romantic appeals of sadness and solitude also feel very contemporary. These relevant interventions are all the more challenging as we remember that Burton, like others of his age, associated all of this with a literal physical substance, choler (also called black bile, also called melancholy itself).
I would not recommend reading this book in its entirety to very many people. In all honesty, I finished it out of stubbornness. The modern reader is often frustrated by its frequent use of classical languages and verse, its heavily repetitious nature, and its many digressions (some of which read as either irrelevant, like the arcane sections on astrology or demonology, or backwards, like the diatribes against Catholics and heathens, or certain lurid descriptions of women's improprieties).
Nonetheless, the Anatomy of Melancholy is a singular and important book. I found a lot of meaning and substance while wading through it, and I am confident the book should be more known and more discussed, even when not read in its entirety.
By the standards of any age, though, the Anatomy of Melancholy is a singular book. Its titanic aspirations melt away genre, form, or topic, and produce something entirely sui generis. To the modern reader, it is often a frustrating work, filled with winding digressions, extravagant inventories of quotation and anecdote, distended sentences which reach towards their meaning by heaping clauses upon clauses upon clauses. It is also an inspiring book. The reader glimpses both the force and intensity of Burton's polymath intellect (polymaths having been banished from our age in favor of "generalists"), and his sincerity, humanity, and evident good intent.
The Anatomy's most powerful feature is its irrepressibly holistic approach to melancholy. We have described and circumscribed depression as a clinical phenomenon; we look to the particular and the distinct. For Burton, melancholy is at once a political problem, a social problem, a spiritual problem, an environmental problem, a physical illness, and a mental illness, all of which he takes seriously. He is interested in the relationship between the patient, the patient's friends and family, the doctor, the medicine or treatment, the surrounding context, and God. This interconnection makes his work challenging and relevant to our era of neatly compartmentalized problems and solutions.
The Anatomy's archaic form also belies deeply sophisticated ideas about the relationship between physical and mental illness, the role of memory and trauma, the social role and limitations of medicine, and the infinite heterogeneity of mental illness. Reading and relating to 17th-century accounts of what we would now call depression is cathartic and powerful. Burton's warnings against the romantic appeals of sadness and solitude also feel very contemporary. These relevant interventions are all the more challenging as we remember that Burton, like others of his age, associated all of this with a literal physical substance, choler (also called black bile, also called melancholy itself).
I would not recommend reading this book in its entirety to very many people. In all honesty, I finished it out of stubbornness. The modern reader is often frustrated by its frequent use of classical languages and verse, its heavily repetitious nature, and its many digressions (some of which read as either irrelevant, like the arcane sections on astrology or demonology, or backwards, like the diatribes against Catholics and heathens, or certain lurid descriptions of women's improprieties).
Nonetheless, the Anatomy of Melancholy is a singular and important book. I found a lot of meaning and substance while wading through it, and I am confident the book should be more known and more discussed, even when not read in its entirety.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Mental illness
Moderate: Body shaming, Chronic illness, Death, Domestic abuse, Misogyny, Panic attacks/disorders, Self harm, Suicidal thoughts, Suicide, Terminal illness, Violence, Xenophobia, Antisemitism, Medical content, Dementia, Grief, Religious bigotry, Medical trauma, and Murder