The English scholar and clergyman Robert Burton (1577-1640) wrote "The Anatomy of Melancholy," an analysis of the symptoms, causes, and cures of the melancholic temperament. Robert Burton was born at Lindley, Leicestershire, on Feb. 8, 1577. He entered...

Robert Burton is known for The Anatomy of Melancholy (1621), a lengthy treatise on the causes and treatment of melancholy that became one of the most popular English books of the early seventeenth century. The primary source of information about...

1577-1640 British clergyman, author, and Oxford dean of divinity best known for his astute observations and descriptions of depressive disorders in The Anatomy of Melancholy (1621). This treatise, which influenced English writing, outlined the causes,...

Robert Burton (8 February 1577 – 25 January 1640) was an English scholar and vicar at Oxford University, best known for writing The Anatomy of...

Writer Robert Burton appears to have been significantly influenced by cartography when he wrote his famous 'The Anatomy of Melancholy.' In his preface he expresses his parallelism between studying the causes of melancholic disorders and exploration of the world. Burton also identified his work...

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In the following essay, Fish detects a unity of style and substance in Burton's frequent digressions and shifts of subject in The Anatomy of Melancholy.

In the essay below, Webber discusses how the “I” persona of Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy combines the two distinct modes of life and art by manipulating the reader through an anecdotal and gossip-oriented analysis of sources rather than through a methodical investigation of the facts.

Lyons, Bridget Gellert. “The Anatomy of Melancholy as Literature.” In Voices of Melancholy: Studies in literary treatments of melancholy in Renaissance England, pp. 113-48. New York: Barnes and Noble, 1971. In the excerpt below, Lyons examines the relations of Burton's work to other literary and expository works on melancholy and asserts that “one of the main achievements of the Anatomy as a work of literature is to portray the melancholy mind in action, even while it is occupied...