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  1. Home
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  3. The Worlds of Renaissance Melancholy
  • Cited by 48
Publisher:
Cambridge University Press
Online publication date:
January 2010
Print publication year:
2006
Online ISBN:
9780511628252
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511628252
Subjects:
Literature, History of Ideas, Renaissance and Early Modern Literature, History, History of Ideas and Intellectual History
Series:
Ideas in Context (78)
Information

Book description

Angus Gowland investigates the theory of melancholy and its many applications in the Renaissance by means of a wide-ranging contextual analysis of Robert Burton's encyclopaedic Anatomy of Melancholy (first published in 1621). Approaching the Anatomy as the culmination of early modern medical, philosophical and spiritual inquiry about melancholy, Gowland examines the ways in which Burton exploited the moral psychology central to the Renaissance understanding of the condition to construct a critical vision of his intellectual and political environment. In the first sustained analysis of the evolving relationship of the Anatomy (in the various versions issued between 1621 and 1651) to late Renaissance humanist learning and early seventeenth-century England and Europe, Gowland corrects the prevailing view of the work as an unreflective digest of other authors' opinions, and reveals the Anatomy's character as a polemical literary engagement with the live intellectual, religious and political issues of its day.

Reviews

Review of the hardback:'… Angus Gowland's new study demonstrates that there is still room in the field for fresh and stimulating work. … Incisive and well-researched, Gowland's study offers readers a comprehensive and original examination of one of early modern England's most interesting thinkers.'

Source: Cahiers Elisabethains

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