TY - BOOK ID - 286193 TI - The worlds of Renaissance melancholy: Robert Burton in context PY - 2006 SN - 9780521867689 0521867681 9780511628252 9781107403017 9781107322073 1107322073 0511628250 1139810634 9781139810630 1107197333 9781107197336 1107316685 9781107316683 1107317649 9781107317642 1107318564 9781107318564 1299399754 9781299399754 1107315727 9781107315723 1107403014 PB - Cambridge Cambridge University Press DB - UniCat KW - Burton, Robert KW - Melancholy. KW - Burton, Robert, KW - Dejection KW - Emotions KW - Depression, Mental KW - Sadness KW - Arts and Humanities KW - History UR - https://www.unicat.be/uniCat?func=search&query=sysid:286193 AB - 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. ER -