© The Author 2005. Published by Oxford University Press 2005; all rights reserved
Burton's ‘Turning Picture’: Argument and Anxiety in The Anatomy of Melancholy
Corpus Christi College, Cambridge
Burton's Anatomy is built around a coherent analysis of melancholy. It presents a consistent explanation of the properties and pathology of melancholy, relating these to a lucid model of mind–body interaction which also accounts for the disease's self-propagating nature. Furthermore, Burton differentiates between those who are merely disposed to, and those who have become habituated to, melancholy, and that distinction makes good sense of the relationship between the Anatomy's preface and the treatise proper. At the centre of this work is an aetiological analysis which roots the causes of melancholy in ethical decisions. Hence, Burton accords primary therapeutic significance to the management of Galen's so-called six ‘non-naturals’. Against this Galenic regimen is set, though, a recurrent anxiety that melancholy may be intractable. That disquiet is reflected in Burton's use of copia as a device, first, for ‘confining’ melancholy (by recording its every facet), and then for overwriting the anxious fear that it cannot be thus confined (because its mutations are infinite). Uneasiness is further reflected in the constant oscillation between Burton's ‘own’ and ‘Democritus Junior's’ persona, an oscillation which dramatizes Burton's sense of the instability of his own sanity. These stylistic features, then, stand in opposition to the rationalist argument.