Abstract
According to Robert Burton, melancholy is defined by the accompanying emotions of ‘feare, and sadnesse’. Yet commentators on renaissance melancholy have tended to emphasise its sorrowful aspects, paying little attention to its association with fear. Starting with the theoretical aspects of fear and their relationship with the corrupt imagination, this essay assesses how Burton handles fear through cause, symptom, prognostic and cure. Further, it suggests that while Burton takes fear seriously, he is also aware of its entertainment value. This essay argues that Burton adapts his sources on fear, in particular the Hippocratic medical case histories, to frame melancholy as a condition that is both exotic and recognisably common to all.
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Notes
- 1.
I use the translation by Dag Nikolaus Hasse (from De Anima, 4.4), “Arabic Philosophy and Averroism,” in The Cambridge Companion to Renaissance Philosophy, ed. James Hankins (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 122. Hasse notes the influence of the example on Erastus, Montaigne, and Pascal among others (124–25) but misses its appropriation by Thomas Aquinas, who was surely an intermediary source for early modern writers such as Robert Burton , who cites him frequently.
- 2.
“Si aliquis incedat super trabem in alto positam propter timorem de facili cadit. Non autem caderet, si incederet super eamdem trabem in imo positam, propter defectum timoris. Ergo timor impedit operationem,” Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, 61 vols, ed. Blackfriars (London: Eyre and Spottiswood, 1964–81), XXI: 70–71 (Ia IIae q. 44 a. 4).
- 3.
Phil. 2: 12, From the King James Bible, via The Bible in English database (Chadwyck-Healey, 1997), http://collections.chadwyck.co.uk. Accessed April 7, 2014.
- 4.
For a full account of Galenic theory of the imagination, see Angus Gowland, “Melancholy , Imagination and Dreaming in Renaissance Learning,” in Diseases of the Imagination and Imaginary Disease in Early Modern Europe, ed. Yasmin Haskell (Turnhout: Brepols, 2012), 56–65.
- 5.
Robert Burton , The Anatomy of Melancholy , 6 vols, ed. Thomas C. Faulkner et al. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989–2000), I, 253. All further quotations are to this edition, incorporated in parentheses in the text. Translations from the Latin are taken from this edition’s Commentary.
- 6.
Aristotle, On Rhetoric: A Theory of Civic Discourse, trans. George A. Kennedy (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), 2.5.1 (139); Juan Luis Vives, Opera, 2 vols, (Basel, 1555), II, 586. On Vives, see further Lorenzo Casini, “Emotions in Renaissance Humanism: Juan Luis Vives,” in Emotions and Choice from Boethius to Descartes, edited by Henrik Lagerlund and Mikko Yrjönsuuri (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 2002), 205–28.
- 7.
Burton’s wording is, in fact, a direct quotation from André du Laurens, A Discourse of the Preservation of the Sight: Of Melancholike Diseases: Of Rheumes, and of Old Age, trans. Richard Surphlet (1599), 86–87.
- 8.
Timothy Bright, A Treatise of Melancholy (London, 1586), 1.
- 9.
See Oxford English Dictionary, ‘melancholy ’, n. 1, 2. b, 3, for definitions related to sadness.
- 10.
See Anatomy, I, 255 and further Cicero, Tusculan Disputations, Books III and IV (esp. III.xi.24–25 on the four perturbationes); Thomas Wright, The Passions of the Mind in Generall (London, 1604), 22–25; Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, Ia IIae. q. 22–q. 25.
- 11.
Wright, The Passions, 19–25; Burton paraphrases Wright in the Anatomy, I, 255.
- 12.
Cicero, Tusculan Disputations, trans. J. E. King (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1945, repr. 2001), IV.viii.19.
- 13.
Bright, A Treatise of Melancholy , 84; Wright, The Passions, 181.
- 14.
This can be seen in the synoptic table Burton provides to the first Partition of the Anatomy, which lays out the content in branching diagrams.
- 15.
Burton does not discuss here the religious experience of terror , but his treatment of terror as a paralysing, horrifyingly alien experience accords with writing about terror dei, on which see Mary Carruthers, ‘Terror , Horror and the Fear of God, or, Why There Is No Medieval Sublime,’ in ‘Truthe is the beste’: A Festschrift in Honour of A. V. C. Schmidt, ed. Nicolas Jacobs and Gerald Morgan (Oxford: Peter Lang, 2014), 17–36.
- 16.
Penny Roberts and William G. Naphy, ‘Introduction,’ in Fear in Early Modern Society, ed. William G. Naphy and Penny Roberts (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1997), 2. As David Gentilcore notes in the same volume (‘The Fear of Disease and the Disease of Fear’, 190), Sigmund Freud in Beyond the Pleasure Principle (1920) attempted to clarify what he saw as a common error in confusing the terms fright , fear, and anxiety ; however, Gentilcore argues, the confusion in usage is telling of the relationship between fear and disease in early modern Italy. Burton says in his subsection on fear as cause that he will ‘voluntarily omit’ discussing anxiety and other ‘fearefull branches’ (I, 260).
- 17.
Aristotle, On Rhetoric, 2.5.1–2 (139).
- 18.
‘Datus est homini metus, ut caveat nocitura, prius quam se illi applicant’, Vives, De Anima et Vita, in Opera, II, 588.
- 19.
See pseudo-Aristotle, Problems, 27; Aquinas, Summa Theologica, Ia IIae q. 44 a. 1.
- 20.
Du Laurens, A Discourse, 91; see also Galen, De Symptomatum Causis, 2.7 and De Locis Affectis, 3.7.
- 21.
Du Laurens, A Discourse, 92.
- 22.
Bright, A Treatise, 106–7.
- 23.
See Mary Ann Lund, Melancholy , Medicine and Religion in Early Modern England: Reading ‘The Anatomy of Melancholy ’ (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 168–74, on the relationship between melancholy , sin, and unhappiness in the Anatomy and other early modern texts.
- 24.
Burton revisits Matteo Ricci on Chinese fears and superstitions in I, 263–64.
- 25.
Giglio Gregorio Giraldi, De Deis Gentium (Basel, 1560), 49; Plutarch, Lives, trans. Bernadotte Perrin, vol. 10 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1923), ‘Life of Cleomenes’, 9.1 (67).
- 26.
Burton gives a footnote reference to Giraldi here. Giraldi’s source is Pausanias, Description of Greece, 5.19.4–5.
- 27.
The Oxford editors do not realise that Burton is quoting an intermediary source here, Johann Roszfeld, Romanarum Antiquitatum Libri Decem (Basel, 1583), 78: ‘Mentem propterea consecrarunt veteres, quemadmodum Varro, Lactantius, Augustinus, & alii tradunt, ut bonam mentem concederet’. Burton cites Roszfeld elsewhere in the Anatomy (see vol. VI, ‘Biobibliography’, s.v. Rosinus); Roszfeld used Giraldi, De Deis Gentium, in which the same information can be found (see 27), but Burton’s phrasing is closer to Roszfeld than Giraldi.
- 28.
Augustine does refer to Volupia in De Civitate Dei, 4.8, in whose temple Angerona’s statue stood.
- 29.
Saturnalia, 1.10, 7, in Macrobius: Vol. 1, ed. J. Willis (Stuttgart and Leipzig: Teubner, 1994), 41. Burton gives the Latin in a footnote; he may by quoting via Giraldi, De Deis Gentium, 57 or Roszfeld, Romanarum Antiquitatum, 175, and see 85. On the Angeronalia see also Pliny the Elder, Historia Naturalis, 3.9.65–67; Varro, De Lingua Latina, 6.23.
- 30.
Macrobius, 1.10.8–9; Roszfeld, 85, 175.
- 31.
See e.g. Thomas Cooper, Thesaurus Linguae Romane & Britannicae (1578), sig. 7e2r.
- 32.
Oxford English Dictionary, ‘molest’, v. 1. a, b. On Burton’s use of ‘crucify’, see Lund, Medicine , Melancholy and Religion, 177–79.
- 33.
‘Ode on Melancholy ,’ in The Poems of John Keats, ed. Jack Stillinger (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1978), ll. 23, 25–26. See further Robert Cummings, “Keats’s Melancholy in the Temple of Delight,” Keats-Shelley Journal 36 (1987): 50–62.
Bibliography
Primary
Aquinas, Thomas. Summa Theologiae. Edited by Blackfriars. 61 vols. London: Eyre and Spottiswood, 1964–81.
Aristotle. On Rhetoric: A Theory of Civic Discourse. Translated by George A. Kennedy. New York: Oxford University Press, 1991.
Bright, Timothy. A Treatise of Melancholy. London, 1586.
Burton, Robert. The Anatomy of Melancholy. Edited by Thomas C. Faulkner, Nicolas K. Kiessling, Rhonda L. Blair, J. B. Bamborough, and Martin Dodsworth. 6 vols. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989–2000.
Cicero. Tusculan Disputations. Translated by J. E. King. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1945, Repr. 2001.
Cooper, Thomas. Thesaurus Linguae Romane & Britannicae. London, 1578.
Du Laurens, André. A Discourse of the Preservation of the Sight: Of Melancholike Diseases: Of Rheumes, and Of Old Age. Translated by Richard Surphlet. London, 1599.
Giraldi, Giglio Gregorio. De Deis Gentium. Basel, 1560.
Roszfeld, Johannes. Romanarum Antiquitatum Libri Decem. Basel, 1583.
The Bible in English. Database. Chadwyck-Healey, 1997. http://collections.chadwyck.co.uk.
Vives, Juan Luis. Opera. 2 vols., Basel, 1555.
Wright, Thomas. The Passions of the Mind in Generall. London, 1604.
Secondary
Carruthers, Mary. “Terror, Horror and the Fear of God, or, Why There Is No Medieval Sublime.” In ‘Truthe is the beste’: A Festschrift in Honour of A. V. C. Schmidt, edited by Nicolas Jacobs and Gerald Morgan, 17–36. Oxford: Peter Lang, 2014.
Casini, Lorenzo. “Emotions in Renaissance Humanism: Juan Luis Vives.” In Emotions and Choice from Boethius to Descartes, edited by Henrik Lagerlund and Mikko Yrjönsuuri, 205–28. Dordrecht: Kluwer, 2002.
Cummings, Robert. “Keats’s Melancholy in the Temple of Delight.” Keats-Shelley Journal 36 (1987): 50–62.
Gentilcore, David. “The Fear of Disease and the Disease of Fear.” In Fear in Early Modern Society, edited by William G. Naphy and Penny Roberts, 184–208. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1997.
Gowland, Angus. “Melancholy, Imagination and Dreaming in Renaissance Learning.” In Diseases of the Imagination and Imaginary Disease in Early Modern Europe, edited by Yasmin Haskell, 53–102. Turnhout: Brepols, 2012.
Hasse, Dag Nikolaus. “Arabic Philosophy and Averroism.” In The Cambridge Companion to Renaissance Philosophy, edited by James Hankins, 116–36. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007.
Lund, Mary Ann. Melancholy, Medicine and Religion in Early Modern England: Reading “The Anatomy of Melancholy.” Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010.
Roberts, Penny, and William G. Naphy. “Introduction.” In Fear in Early Modern Society, edited by William G. Naphy and Penny Roberts, 1–8. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1997.
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Lund, M.A. (2018). Without a Cause: Fear in the Anatomy of Melancholy. In: McCann, D., McKechnie-Mason, C. (eds) Fear in the Medical and Literary Imagination, Medieval to Modern. Palgrave Studies in Literature, Science and Medicine. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-55948-7_3
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