The Anatomy of Melancholy

In Our Time

BBC

History

4.6 • 9.2K Ratings

🗓️ 12 May 2011

⏱️ 42 minutes

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Summary

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss Robert Burton's masterpiece The Anatomy of Melancholy.In 1621 the priest and scholar Robert Burton published a book quite unlike any other. The Anatomy of Melancholy brings together almost two thousand years of scholarship, from Ancient Greek philosophy to seventeenth-century medicine. Melancholy, a condition believed to be caused by an imbalance of the body's four humours, was characterised by despondency, depression and inactivity. Burton himself suffered from it, and resolved to compile an authoritative work of scholarship on the malady, drawing on all relevant sources.Despite its subject matter the Anatomy is an entertaining work, described by Samuel Johnson as the only book 'that ever took him out of bed two hours sooner than he wished to rise.' It also offers a fascinating insight into seventeenth-century medical theory, and influenced many generations of playwrights and poets.With:Julie SandersProfessor of English Literature and Drama at the University of NottinghamMary Ann LundLecturer in English at the University of LeicesterErin SullivanLecturer and Fellow at the Shakespeare Institute at the University of Birmingham.Producer: Thomas Morris.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Thanks for downloading the In Our Time podcast. For more details about In Our Time and for our terms of use
0:05.4	Please go to bbc.co.uk forward slash radio for. I hope you enjoy the program
0:12.0	Hello, Samuel Johnson the compiler of his mighty English dictionary suffered terribly from depression
0:17.8	Quote, I inherited a vile melancholy from my father. He said which made me mad all my life
0:24.2	Reading offered Dr. Johnson some respite and one book in particular helped lift his gloom
0:28.5	Robert Burton's the anatomy of melancholy was said by Dr. Johnson the only book that ever took him out of bed two hours sooner
0:35.4	Then he wished to rise. It was first published in 1621
0:39.6	The anatomy of melancholy is a huge and entertaining work devoted to the causes and treatment of melancholy a
0:45.7	Melody which preoccupied many writers of that period
0:48.5	Part medical treatise part literary anthology. He draws on sources ranging from classical authors to the latest medical authorities
0:55.5	Reflecting Burton's astonishingly broad reading the book captivated contemporary readers and it inflows later writers including Milton
1:02.6	Keats and Beckett. It's still in print. With me to discuss the anatomy of melancholy are Julie Sanders Professor of English Literature and Drama at the University of Nottingham
1:11.7	Mary-Anne Lund lecturer in English at the University of Lester and Aaron Sullivan lecture and fellow at the Shakespeare Institute at the University of Birmingham
1:19.9	Julie Sanders in some ways this is one of the most unusual books in the English language
1:24.9	Can you give us some idea of its compendious nature? Well, the anatomy of melancholy has been variously described as an encyclopedia
1:33.8	As a commonplace book as a mind of quotations as a medical manual as a self-help book and indeed as one of the messiest books ever written
1:44.0	Which I think it's a some idea of the the sheer diversity of approach and topic that Burton brings to his subject
1:50.6	I mean as its title suggests an anatomy
1:53.1	It's an opening up a dissecting of what Robert Burton regarded as an epidemic of melancholy in his own time
2:00.7	And he comes at this subject by
2:04.4	invoking as you've already said medical
2:06.4	Religious philosophical and ethical and literary and poetic authorities to try and perform that an atomizing that
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