A User's Guide to Melancholy takes Robert Burton's encyclopaedic masterpiece The Anatomy of Melancholy (first published in 1621) as a guide to one of the most perplexing, elusive, attractive, and afflicting diseases of the Renaissance. Burton's Anatomy is perhaps the largest, st…
A User's Guide to Melancholy takes Robert Burton's encyclopaedic masterpiece The Anatomy of Melancholy (first published in 1621) as a guide to one of the most perplexing, elusive, attractive, and afflicting diseases of the Renaissance. Burton's Anatomy is perhaps the largest, st…
"The story Burton tells of the sixteenth-century Jewish Frenchman not only shows how strong the imagination can be, but also plays out an intriguing philosophical puzzle. A man puts his life at risk by crossing over a brook by night but, since he is unable to see, he cannot perc…