Burton anatomizes melancholy in exhaustive, digressive detail — its causes, symptoms, and cures — folding centuries of classical and contemporary learning into a work as strange as it is scholarly.
Books mentioned in The Anatomy of Melancholy (46)
Utopia by Thomas More: “Sir Thomas More in his Utopia commends voluntary death, if he be sibi aut aliis molestus, troublesome to himself or others,”
The City of God by Augustine of Hippo: “He that is desirous to hear of this disease, or more examples, let him read Austin in his 18th book de Civitate Dei, cap. 5.”
Metamorphoses by Ovid: “6500. As true as Homer's Iliad, Ovid's Metamorphoses, Aesop's Fables.”
Aesop's Fables by Aesop: “6500. As true as Homer's Iliad, Ovid's Metamorphoses, Aesop's Fables.”
Iliad by Homer: “Homer, Iliad. 1, brings in Achilles eating of his own heart in his idleness, because he might not fight.”
The Odyssey by Homer: “Plutarch saith as much of Homer, for which cause belike Niceratus, in Xenophon, was made by his parents to con Homer's Iliads and Odysseys without book, ut in virum bonum evaderet,”
The Aeneid by Virgil: “A company of stern readers dislike the second of the Aeneids, and Virgil's gravity, for inserting such amorous passions in an heroical subject;”
Arcadia by Philip Sidney: “4998. Sidney's Arcadia.”
Essays by Michel de Montaigne: “Montaigne, in his Essays, gives instate in Caesar, Mahomet the Turk, that sacked Constantinople, and Ladislaus, king of Naples, that besieged Florence:”
Natural History by Pliny the Elder: “Uncle Pliny, lib. 2. cap. 7. nat. hist. and lib. 7. cap. 55, in express words denies the immortality of the soul.”
Amadis de Gaul by Garci Rodriguez de Montalvo: “or such inamoratos as read nothing but play-books, idle poems, jests, Amadis de Gaul, the Knight of the Sun, the Seven Champions, Palmerin de Oliva, Huon of Bordeaux, &c.”
The Seven Champions of Christendom by Richard Johnson: “or such inamoratos as read nothing but play-books, idle poems, jests, Amadis de Gaul, the Knight of the Sun, the Seven Champions, Palmerin de Oliva, Huon of Bordeaux, &c.”
Palmerín de Oliva: “or such inamoratos as read nothing but play-books, idle poems, jests, Amadis de Gaul, the Knight of the Sun, the Seven Champions, Palmerin de Oliva, Huon of Bordeaux, &c.”
Huon of Bordeaux: “or such inamoratos as read nothing but play-books, idle poems, jests, Amadis de Gaul, the Knight of the Sun, the Seven Champions, Palmerin de Oliva, Huon of Bordeaux, &c.”
The Faerie Queene by Edmund Spenser: “4899. Spenser in his Faerie Queene.”
The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer: “their symptoms are well expressed by Sir Geoffrey Chaucer in his first Canterbury Tale.”
De Consolatione by Gerolamo Cardano: “Cardan professeth he wrote his book, De Consolatione after his son's death, to comfort himself;”
The Satyricon by Petronius: “saith Petronius in his fragment of pure impurities, I mean his Satyricon,”
Timaeus by Plato: “as Plato in his Timaeus, Plotinus in his Enneades more largely discuss,”
Enneads by Plotinus: “as Plato in his Timaeus, Plotinus in his Enneades more largely discuss,”
Phaedo by Plato: “and Socrates himself defends it, in Plato's Phaedon, "if any man labour of an incurable disease, he may despatch himself, if it be to his good."”
Phaedrus by Plato: “as Plato disputes at large in his Dialogue de pulchro, Phaedro, Hyppias, and after many sophistical errors confuted, concludes that beauty is a grace in all things,”
Laws by Plato: “and which Plato 9. de legibus approves, if old age, poverty, ignominy, &c. oppress,”
The Nicomachean Ethics by Aristotle: “Aristotle in his Ethics holds felix idemque sapiens, to be wise and happy, are reciprocal terms,”
Politics by Aristotle: “Aristotle, Polit. lib. 3, cap. 4, calls Commune bonum,”
Tusculan Disputations by Cicero: “'Tis the same which Tully maintains in the second of his Tusculans, omnium insipientum animi in morbo sunt, et perturbatorum,”
Cyropaedia by Xenophon: “5656. Cyropaedia. cum Pantheae forman evexisset Araspus, tanto magis, inquit Cyrus abstinere oportet, quanto pulchrior est.”
The Discoverie of Witchcraft by Reginald Scot: “many are deceived by legerdemain, as Scot hath well showed in his book of the discovery of witchcraft,”
The Golden Legend by Jacobus de Voragine: “Had he read the Golden Legend, the Turks' Alcoran, or Jews' Talmud, the Rabbins' Comments, what would he have thought?”
The Koran: “Had he read the Golden Legend, the Turks' Alcoran, or Jews' Talmud, the Rabbins' Comments, what would he have thought?”
Talmud: “Had he read the Golden Legend, the Turks' Alcoran, or Jews' Talmud, the Rabbins' Comments, what would he have thought?”
Euphues by John Lyly: “"And hard is the choice" (as it is in Euphues) "when one is compelled either by silence to die with grief, or by speaking to live with shame."”
De Locis Affectis by Galen: “and Galen lib. 6. de locis affectis, cap. 5. they will be sick for love;”
De Rerum Varietate by Gerolamo Cardano: “saith Cardan, lib. 8. cap. 4. de rerum varietate:”
De Occulta Philosophia by Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa von Nettesheim: “Cornelius Agrippa hath discoursed lib. 1. de occult. Philos. cap. 63, 64, 65.”
The Fisherman (Piscator) by Lucian: “Read Lucian's Piscator, and tell how he esteemed them; Agrippa's Tract of the vanity of Sciences;”
The Confessions by Augustine of Hippo: “A mere temptation is our life, (Austin, confess. lib. 10. cap. 28,)”
The City of the Sun by Tommaso Campanella: “Respub. Christianopolitana, Campanella's city of the Sun, and that new Atlantis, witty fictions, but mere chimeras;”
New Atlantis by Francis Bacon: “Respub. Christianopolitana, Campanella's city of the Sun, and that new Atlantis, witty fictions, but mere chimeras;”
Saturnalia by Macrobius: “and as Macrobius records, l. 10. Saturnalium;”
Valentine and Orson: “this is the original belike of that common tale of Valentine and Orson:”
Letters to Lucilius by Seneca: “great-witted Aristotle's works are as much authentical to them as Scriptures, subtle Seneca's Epistles as canonical as St. Paul's, Pindarus' Odes as good as the Prophet David's Psalms, Epictetus' Enchiridion equivalent to wise Solomon's Proverbs.”
Odes by Pindar: “great-witted Aristotle's works are as much authentical to them as Scriptures, subtle Seneca's Epistles as canonical as St. Paul's, Pindarus' Odes as good as the Prophet David's Psalms, Epictetus' Enchiridion equivalent to wise Solomon's Proverbs.”
The Enchiridion by Epictetus: “great-witted Aristotle's works are as much authentical to them as Scriptures, subtle Seneca's Epistles as canonical as St. Paul's, Pindarus' Odes as good as the Prophet David's Psalms, Epictetus' Enchiridion equivalent to wise Solomon's Proverbs.”
Books that mention The Anatomy of Melancholy (10)
The War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells: “'But who shall dwell in these worlds if they be inhabited? . . . Are we or they Lords of the World? . . . And how are all things made for man?' KEPLER (quoted in _The Anatomy of Melancholy_)”
Billy Budd by Herman Melville: “From my window, where I was reading Burton's _Anatomy of Melancholy_, I saw him in the act.”
Westward Ho! by Charles Kingsley: “…is to them) the eldest of the gods, and the son of Jove and Venus, yet is reported by other equally good authorities, as Burton has set forth in his "Anatomy of Melancholy," to be after all only the child of idleness and fulness of bread.”
Ficciones by Jorge Luis Borges: “The Anatomy of Melancholy, part. (epigraph to "La biblioteca de Babel").”
Foucault's Pendulum by Umberto Eco: “(epigraph) —Robert Burton, The Anatomy of Melancholy, Oxford, 1621”
The Library of Babel and Other Stories by Jorge Luis Borges: Epigraph to "The Library of Babel": "By this art you may contemplate the variation of the 23 letters..." — THE ANATOMY OF MELANCHOLY, Part 2, Sect. II, Mem. IV.
Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert A. Heinlein: “Duke, you'll find some glasses stashed behind The Anatomy of Melancholy up there-”
Books: A Memoir by Larry McMurtry: “I paid Ted Brown $7.50 for a nice copy of The Anatomy of Melancholy”
The Topeka School by Ben Lerner: “'There was rumored to be a copy of The Anatomy of Melancholy bound in human skin.'”
Waverley by Walter Scott: “or, as Burton's "Anatomia" hath it, a phrenesiac or lethargic patient,”