The Poetics of Melancholy in Early Modern EnglandCambridge University Press, 2004 M09 30 - 252 pages The Poetics of Melancholy in Early Modern England explores how attitudes toward, and explanations of, human emotions change in England during the late sixteenth and early seventeenth century. Typically categorized as 'literary' writers Edmund Spenser, John Donne, Robert Burton and John Milton were all active in the period's reappraisal of the single emotion that, due to their efforts, would become the passion most associated with the writing life: melancholy. By emphasising the shared concerns of the 'non-literary' and 'literary' texts produced by these figures, Douglas Trevor asserts that quintessentially 'scholarly' practices such as glossing texts and appending sidenotes shape the methods by which these same writers come to analyse their own moods. He also examines early modern medical texts, dramaturgical representations of learned depressives such as Shakespeare's Hamlet, and the opposition to materialistic accounts of the passions voiced by Neoplatonists such as Edmund Spenser. |
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Contents
The reinvention of sadness | |
The margins of learning | 22 |
Detachability and the passions in Edmund Spensers The Shepheardes Calender | 32 |
Sadness in The Faerie Queene | 45 |
Hamlet and the humors of skepticism | 61 |
John Donne and scholarly melancholy | 85 |
the Sidenote as Symptom | 103 |
Robert Burtons melancholic England | 114 |
Burtons scholarly method | 128 |
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Common terms and phrases
according Anatomy of Melancholy antiprelatical argue Biathanatos black bile bodily body Cambridge University Press Christian citations claims Culture cure depression describes despair Devotions discourse disposition divine Doctrine Donne's Early Modern England early modern period edition Edmund Spenser emotional English example Faerie Queene Ficino figure Galenic genre glosses Hamlet hath haue Holy human humoral theory Ibid imagine insists intellectual John Donne John Milton Lacan learned Lewalski literary London Lycidas marginal Martin Bucer melan melancholic scholar mind mood Neoplatonic nonetheless one's Oxford Paradise Lost Paradise Regained passions pastoral patronage patrons Penseroso poem poet poet's poetic poetry polemic Prose readers reading Redcrosse rejection religious Renaissance Robert Burton sadness scholarly melancholy scholarly method Schollers self-presentation self-slaughter sense seventeenth century Shakespeare Shepheardes Calender sidenotes sixteenth skepticism social solitary Sonnets soul spiritual suicide textual thinkers Thomas tradition trans Treatise of Melancholie verse writing