Jennifer Radden
- Published in print:
- 2002
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780195151657
- eISBN:
- 9780199849253
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195151657.003.0020
- Subject:
- Philosophy, General
This chapter discusses two poems by John Keats — “Ode of Melancholy” and “What the Thrush Said.” Keats knew much suffering and died while still a young man. Consumptive and weak, he experienced many ...
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This chapter discusses two poems by John Keats — “Ode of Melancholy” and “What the Thrush Said.” Keats knew much suffering and died while still a young man. Consumptive and weak, he experienced many phases of despondency and moodiness. By the time he received recognition for his work, he was seriously ill with tuberculosis. The ode on melancholy starts with the world of darkness and pain, so vividly described that we are reminded that Keats wrote from personal experience. His evocation of the dual aspects of melancholy, the stress on the paradox uniting sensual pleasure, energy, and vitality, on the one hand, and despair, suffering, and passivity, on the other, elevates his writing on melancholy to a place beside that of Elizabethan authors.Less
This chapter discusses two poems by John Keats — “Ode of Melancholy” and “What the Thrush Said.” Keats knew much suffering and died while still a young man. Consumptive and weak, he experienced many phases of despondency and moodiness. By the time he received recognition for his work, he was seriously ill with tuberculosis. The ode on melancholy starts with the world of darkness and pain, so vividly described that we are reminded that Keats wrote from personal experience. His evocation of the dual aspects of melancholy, the stress on the paradox uniting sensual pleasure, energy, and vitality, on the one hand, and despair, suffering, and passivity, on the other, elevates his writing on melancholy to a place beside that of Elizabethan authors.
Jennifer Radden (ed.)
- Published in print:
- 2002
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780195151657
- eISBN:
- 9780199849253
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195151657.001.0001
- Subject:
- Philosophy, General
Spanning twenty-four centuries, this anthology collects over thirty selections of important Western writing about melancholy and its related conditions by philosophers, doctors, religious and ...
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Spanning twenty-four centuries, this anthology collects over thirty selections of important Western writing about melancholy and its related conditions by philosophers, doctors, religious and literary figures, and modern psychologists. Truly interdisciplinary, it is the first such anthology. As it traces Western attitudes, it reveals a conversation across centuries and continents as the authors interpret, respond, and build on each other's work. The editor provides an extensive, in-depth introduction that draws links and parallels between the selections, and reveals the ambiguous relationship between these historical accounts of melancholy and today's psychiatric views on depression.Less
Spanning twenty-four centuries, this anthology collects over thirty selections of important Western writing about melancholy and its related conditions by philosophers, doctors, religious and literary figures, and modern psychologists. Truly interdisciplinary, it is the first such anthology. As it traces Western attitudes, it reveals a conversation across centuries and continents as the authors interpret, respond, and build on each other's work. The editor provides an extensive, in-depth introduction that draws links and parallels between the selections, and reveals the ambiguous relationship between these historical accounts of melancholy and today's psychiatric views on depression.
Jennifer Radden
- Published in print:
- 2002
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780195151657
- eISBN:
- 9780199849253
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195151657.003.0005
- Subject:
- Philosophy, General
This chapter presents Avicenna's discussion of melancholy. Avicenna is the Latinized form of the Arabic Ibn Sina, an abbreviation of Abu Ali al Husain ibn Abd, Allah ib Sina. Avicenna lived between ...
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This chapter presents Avicenna's discussion of melancholy. Avicenna is the Latinized form of the Arabic Ibn Sina, an abbreviation of Abu Ali al Husain ibn Abd, Allah ib Sina. Avicenna lived between 980 and 1037. He was born near Bukhara and was of Persian origin. Avicenna's masterpiece, written in Arabic, was the four-volume Canon of Medicine. The writing on melancholy in the Canon illustrates the way humoral theory and the symptom descriptions of melancholia traveled between ancient and medieval (western European) medicine by way of Arabic medicine. Arabic medical authorities such as Avicenna and his immediate influences Ishaq ibn Imran and Haly Abbas knew Greek medical lore, and, although there were also more direct sources through the Latin translations of the Greek works, were to a significant extent responsible for its return to western Europe to influence medieval medicine.Less
This chapter presents Avicenna's discussion of melancholy. Avicenna is the Latinized form of the Arabic Ibn Sina, an abbreviation of Abu Ali al Husain ibn Abd, Allah ib Sina. Avicenna lived between 980 and 1037. He was born near Bukhara and was of Persian origin. Avicenna's masterpiece, written in Arabic, was the four-volume Canon of Medicine. The writing on melancholy in the Canon illustrates the way humoral theory and the symptom descriptions of melancholia traveled between ancient and medieval (western European) medicine by way of Arabic medicine. Arabic medical authorities such as Avicenna and his immediate influences Ishaq ibn Imran and Haly Abbas knew Greek medical lore, and, although there were also more direct sources through the Latin translations of the Greek works, were to a significant extent responsible for its return to western Europe to influence medieval medicine.
Jennifer Radden
- Published in print:
- 2002
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780195151657
- eISBN:
- 9780199849253
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195151657.003.0011
- Subject:
- Philosophy, General
This chapter presents Samuel Butler's discussion of melancholy. The work Characters, from which the following sketch of the melancholy man is taken, was written between 1667 and 1669. Butler's volume ...
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This chapter presents Samuel Butler's discussion of melancholy. The work Characters, from which the following sketch of the melancholy man is taken, was written between 1667 and 1669. Butler's volume of characters contains almost 200 different human types he observed in the society about him in Restoration England. As well as the melancholy man, he sketched the Bumpkin or Country Squire, the Hypocritical Man, the Huffing Courtier, the Catholic, the Curious Man, the Proud Man, and the Hypocritical Nonconformist. In this text, melancholy is portrayed both as a normal variation of human personality and as a pathological condition, and no tension seems to attach to this seeming contradiction. In keeping with the tradition of characters, Butler's melancholy man is at times no more than a dispositional type. On the other hand, the melancholy man is said to see visions and hear voices, and he seems incapable of distinguishing accurate from inaccurate perceptual experience.Less
This chapter presents Samuel Butler's discussion of melancholy. The work Characters, from which the following sketch of the melancholy man is taken, was written between 1667 and 1669. Butler's volume of characters contains almost 200 different human types he observed in the society about him in Restoration England. As well as the melancholy man, he sketched the Bumpkin or Country Squire, the Hypocritical Man, the Huffing Courtier, the Catholic, the Curious Man, the Proud Man, and the Hypocritical Nonconformist. In this text, melancholy is portrayed both as a normal variation of human personality and as a pathological condition, and no tension seems to attach to this seeming contradiction. In keeping with the tradition of characters, Butler's melancholy man is at times no more than a dispositional type. On the other hand, the melancholy man is said to see visions and hear voices, and he seems incapable of distinguishing accurate from inaccurate perceptual experience.
Jennifer Radden
- Published in print:
- 2002
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780195151657
- eISBN:
- 9780199849253
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195151657.003.0023
- Subject:
- Philosophy, General
Samuel Smiles, born in 1812, was an influential figure in the 19th-century “self-help” movement. His book, Self-help: With Illustrations of Character, Conduct and Perseverance (1859) grew out of a ...
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Samuel Smiles, born in 1812, was an influential figure in the 19th-century “self-help” movement. His book, Self-help: With Illustrations of Character, Conduct and Perseverance (1859) grew out of a series of lectures, designed for self-improvement, which he gave to young men as editor of the Leeds Times newspaper. This chapter presents passages from an 1862 American edition of that work. His theme was that diligent self-culture, self-control, and self-discipline held the key to human fulfillment; his motto: “It all depends on me.” Smiles's emphasis on and disgust with the unmanly, unmasculine quality of the Romantic melancholy popularized by Goethe and Byron may account in significant part for the curious gender reversal by which, toward the end of the 19th century melancholy, melancholia, and related responses came to be associated with women and the feminine.Less
Samuel Smiles, born in 1812, was an influential figure in the 19th-century “self-help” movement. His book, Self-help: With Illustrations of Character, Conduct and Perseverance (1859) grew out of a series of lectures, designed for self-improvement, which he gave to young men as editor of the Leeds Times newspaper. This chapter presents passages from an 1862 American edition of that work. His theme was that diligent self-culture, self-control, and self-discipline held the key to human fulfillment; his motto: “It all depends on me.” Smiles's emphasis on and disgust with the unmanly, unmasculine quality of the Romantic melancholy popularized by Goethe and Byron may account in significant part for the curious gender reversal by which, toward the end of the 19th century melancholy, melancholia, and related responses came to be associated with women and the feminine.
David Kyuman Kim
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- September 2007
- ISBN:
- 9780195319828
- eISBN:
- 9780199785667
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195319828.003.0001
- Subject:
- Religion, Theology
This chapter lays the theoretical foundations for the analyses in this volume, which focus on “agency as melancholic freedom”. Framing the challenges of the difficult terms of “agency” and ...
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This chapter lays the theoretical foundations for the analyses in this volume, which focus on “agency as melancholic freedom”. Framing the challenges of the difficult terms of “agency” and “melancholy” captures the sentiments, dispositions, and experiences of the piety to freedom that have been fundamental to modernity and to late modernity or postmodernity. Agency as the spirit of politics; and relationships between the religious, the moral-ethical, and the political are discussed.Less
This chapter lays the theoretical foundations for the analyses in this volume, which focus on “agency as melancholic freedom”. Framing the challenges of the difficult terms of “agency” and “melancholy” captures the sentiments, dispositions, and experiences of the piety to freedom that have been fundamental to modernity and to late modernity or postmodernity. Agency as the spirit of politics; and relationships between the religious, the moral-ethical, and the political are discussed.
David Kyuman Kim
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- September 2007
- ISBN:
- 9780195319828
- eISBN:
- 9780199785667
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195319828.003.0002
- Subject:
- Religion, Theology
This chapter discusses the philosophical and historical account that Charles Taylor developed on agency, identity, and the good, in particular in his collected essays and in Sources of the Self. The ...
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This chapter discusses the philosophical and historical account that Charles Taylor developed on agency, identity, and the good, in particular in his collected essays and in Sources of the Self. The chapter begins with a discussion of Taylor's theories of agency and language and the philosophical anthropology that he develops. Taylor's retrieval and critique of the ethos of Romantic expressivism and his turn to modernism as a resource for responding to this are examined.Less
This chapter discusses the philosophical and historical account that Charles Taylor developed on agency, identity, and the good, in particular in his collected essays and in Sources of the Self. The chapter begins with a discussion of Taylor's theories of agency and language and the philosophical anthropology that he develops. Taylor's retrieval and critique of the ethos of Romantic expressivism and his turn to modernism as a resource for responding to this are examined.
David Kyuman Kim
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- September 2007
- ISBN:
- 9780195319828
- eISBN:
- 9780199785667
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195319828.003.0004
- Subject:
- Religion, Theology
This chapter focuses on an alternative vision of agency found in what has come to be called the politics of difference. It presents a critical engagement with one of the most influential contemporary ...
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This chapter focuses on an alternative vision of agency found in what has come to be called the politics of difference. It presents a critical engagement with one of the most influential contemporary theorists of agency: Judith Butler. The chapter begins with some background on the politics of difference, specifically in the context of how it developed within feminist theory. It then moves to a sketch of Butler's work on agency, specifically her theory of performativity: from her early critiques of subjectivity and the (near) totalizing effects she grants to power, to her more recent work that nuances the claims about power and agency, specifically in light of her use and appropriation of the idea of melancholy/melancholia. It is argued that a comparison between Taylor and Butler shows how each of their projects begins with distinctive forms of melancholy that create the conditions for the possibility of agency. Butler's focus on the relationship between the social and the psyche/psychic life is a search for possibility and hope under conditions of subjection by power. This search also effectively marks Butler's work as a project of regenerating agency.Less
This chapter focuses on an alternative vision of agency found in what has come to be called the politics of difference. It presents a critical engagement with one of the most influential contemporary theorists of agency: Judith Butler. The chapter begins with some background on the politics of difference, specifically in the context of how it developed within feminist theory. It then moves to a sketch of Butler's work on agency, specifically her theory of performativity: from her early critiques of subjectivity and the (near) totalizing effects she grants to power, to her more recent work that nuances the claims about power and agency, specifically in light of her use and appropriation of the idea of melancholy/melancholia. It is argued that a comparison between Taylor and Butler shows how each of their projects begins with distinctive forms of melancholy that create the conditions for the possibility of agency. Butler's focus on the relationship between the social and the psyche/psychic life is a search for possibility and hope under conditions of subjection by power. This search also effectively marks Butler's work as a project of regenerating agency.
David Kyuman Kim
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- September 2007
- ISBN:
- 9780195319828
- eISBN:
- 9780199785667
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195319828.003.0005
- Subject:
- Religion, Theology
This chapter examines Taylor's and Butler's accounts of melancholy and agency. It is argued that the form of melancholy shared by their accounts is a key feature of symbolic loss in the constitution ...
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This chapter examines Taylor's and Butler's accounts of melancholy and agency. It is argued that the form of melancholy shared by their accounts is a key feature of symbolic loss in the constitution of the self, and symbolic loss has a central role in creating the conditions for the possibility of new modes of agency. The convention in appropriating melancholy follows the comparative example Freud established between mourning and melancholia (melancholy), in which the character of loss and the reluctance to give up on an object of love in the latter (melancholia/melancholy) takes its lead and form from the former (mourning).Less
This chapter examines Taylor's and Butler's accounts of melancholy and agency. It is argued that the form of melancholy shared by their accounts is a key feature of symbolic loss in the constitution of the self, and symbolic loss has a central role in creating the conditions for the possibility of new modes of agency. The convention in appropriating melancholy follows the comparative example Freud established between mourning and melancholia (melancholy), in which the character of loss and the reluctance to give up on an object of love in the latter (melancholia/melancholy) takes its lead and form from the former (mourning).
Lesel Dawson
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- January 2009
- ISBN:
- 9780199266128
- eISBN:
- 9780191708688
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199266128.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 16th-century and Renaissance Literature, Women's Literature
The discourse of love, which is subjective, private, and instinctive, is also culturally constructed, public, and learned; it emphasizes the way in which the expression of reflexive feelings is bound ...
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The discourse of love, which is subjective, private, and instinctive, is also culturally constructed, public, and learned; it emphasizes the way in which the expression of reflexive feelings is bound up in wider historical narratives about bodies and interiority. In early modern medical texts, intense unfulfilled erotic desire is held to be a real and virulent disease: it is classified as a species of melancholy, with physical aetiologies and cures. This book analyses literary representations of lovesickness in relation to medical ideas about desire and wider questions about gender and identity, exploring the different ways that desire is believed to take root in the body, how gender roles are encoded and contested in courtship, and the psychic pains and pleasures of frustrated passion. It considers the relationship between women's lovesickness and other female maladies (such as hysteria and green sickness), and asks whether women can suffer from intellectual forms of melancholy generally thought to be exclusively male. It also examines the ways in which Neoplatonism offers an alternative construction of love to that found in natural philosophy, inverting much of the medical advice for what is held to be healthy in romantic love and promoting a different hierarchical relationship between the sexes. Finally, this study considers how anxieties concerning love's ability to emasculate the male lover emerge indirectly in remedies for lovesickness, illuminating ideas about masculinity as well as some of the psychic contradictions of erotic desire. Authors considered include: Shakespeare, Beaumont and Fletcher, Thomas Middleton, John Ford, and William Davenant.Less
The discourse of love, which is subjective, private, and instinctive, is also culturally constructed, public, and learned; it emphasizes the way in which the expression of reflexive feelings is bound up in wider historical narratives about bodies and interiority. In early modern medical texts, intense unfulfilled erotic desire is held to be a real and virulent disease: it is classified as a species of melancholy, with physical aetiologies and cures. This book analyses literary representations of lovesickness in relation to medical ideas about desire and wider questions about gender and identity, exploring the different ways that desire is believed to take root in the body, how gender roles are encoded and contested in courtship, and the psychic pains and pleasures of frustrated passion. It considers the relationship between women's lovesickness and other female maladies (such as hysteria and green sickness), and asks whether women can suffer from intellectual forms of melancholy generally thought to be exclusively male. It also examines the ways in which Neoplatonism offers an alternative construction of love to that found in natural philosophy, inverting much of the medical advice for what is held to be healthy in romantic love and promoting a different hierarchical relationship between the sexes. Finally, this study considers how anxieties concerning love's ability to emasculate the male lover emerge indirectly in remedies for lovesickness, illuminating ideas about masculinity as well as some of the psychic contradictions of erotic desire. Authors considered include: Shakespeare, Beaumont and Fletcher, Thomas Middleton, John Ford, and William Davenant.
David Manning
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780195182392
- eISBN:
- 9780199851485
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195182392.003.0020
- Subject:
- Music, History, Western
This chapter knows on the best authority that the wise thrush sings every song through twice, and this cannot be done without some amount of organization. Or take the case of the solitary reaper. She ...
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This chapter knows on the best authority that the wise thrush sings every song through twice, and this cannot be done without some amount of organization. Or take the case of the solitary reaper. She does not require a committee to help her sing her melancholy strain. However, the reaper was solitary. Supposing 20 reapers all wished to sing together of old, unhappy, far-off things. Would they not have to invoke the aid of the paraphernalia of organization with all its dreary but necessary jargon of local authorities, questionnaires, and the like? The chapter supposes that even anything so primitive as one cuckoo answering another involves some arrangement. Indeed, it fears that the cuckoos even have to “contact” each other. In this regard, organization is not art, but art cannot flourish without it.Less
This chapter knows on the best authority that the wise thrush sings every song through twice, and this cannot be done without some amount of organization. Or take the case of the solitary reaper. She does not require a committee to help her sing her melancholy strain. However, the reaper was solitary. Supposing 20 reapers all wished to sing together of old, unhappy, far-off things. Would they not have to invoke the aid of the paraphernalia of organization with all its dreary but necessary jargon of local authorities, questionnaires, and the like? The chapter supposes that even anything so primitive as one cuckoo answering another involves some arrangement. Indeed, it fears that the cuckoos even have to “contact” each other. In this regard, organization is not art, but art cannot flourish without it.
Williams Martin
- Published in print:
- 1993
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780195083491
- eISBN:
- 9780199853205
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195083491.003.0041
- Subject:
- Music, Popular
Horace Silver Quintet's “Further Explorations” on Blue Note had a piece titled “Melancholy”; it was a slow piano trio performance. Its theme was an adept borrowing from Debussy. Silver's performance ...
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Horace Silver Quintet's “Further Explorations” on Blue Note had a piece titled “Melancholy”; it was a slow piano trio performance. Its theme was an adept borrowing from Debussy. Silver's performance soon became a double-timed, disjointed series of interpolations of everything from bugle calls to gospel motifs, bop figures to archaic blues riffs. “Ill Wind” was given a scoring and tempo that made it into something rather flip which did hardly anything with the implicit possibilities of its melody or mood. Art Farmer was the soloist trumpeter of this recording. He was emphatically not the typical Eastern hard cooker, but a trumpeter of experience and range.Less
Horace Silver Quintet's “Further Explorations” on Blue Note had a piece titled “Melancholy”; it was a slow piano trio performance. Its theme was an adept borrowing from Debussy. Silver's performance soon became a double-timed, disjointed series of interpolations of everything from bugle calls to gospel motifs, bop figures to archaic blues riffs. “Ill Wind” was given a scoring and tempo that made it into something rather flip which did hardly anything with the implicit possibilities of its melody or mood. Art Farmer was the soloist trumpeter of this recording. He was emphatically not the typical Eastern hard cooker, but a trumpeter of experience and range.
Ceri Sullivan
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- September 2008
- ISBN:
- 9780199547845
- eISBN:
- 9780191720901
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199547845.003.0006
- Subject:
- Literature, 17th-century and Restoration Literature
This chapter studies the frequent use of images of dust or fragments as an attack on the foundation of judicious dialogue, mutual engagement. An effective response to enforced attention is flabby ...
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This chapter studies the frequent use of images of dust or fragments as an attack on the foundation of judicious dialogue, mutual engagement. An effective response to enforced attention is flabby uninterest. Poems break up those selves which should be focused on God. Both the image of distraction and its rhetorical formulation, aposiopesis (breaking off of speech), demonstrate that being lectured at results in a conscience which turns a deaf ear. This is neither acedia (torpor in devotion) nor melancholy, but boredom at an all-too-present divine. Although the fallen conscience acknowledges it goes to bits if not pulled together by God, it is irritated at the requirement to attend to him — even despite the numerous professional aids to listening the period boasts. Accordingly, a very aetiolated desire to hear God's words comes out repeatedly in a fretful comedy of weariness.Less
This chapter studies the frequent use of images of dust or fragments as an attack on the foundation of judicious dialogue, mutual engagement. An effective response to enforced attention is flabby uninterest. Poems break up those selves which should be focused on God. Both the image of distraction and its rhetorical formulation, aposiopesis (breaking off of speech), demonstrate that being lectured at results in a conscience which turns a deaf ear. This is neither acedia (torpor in devotion) nor melancholy, but boredom at an all-too-present divine. Although the fallen conscience acknowledges it goes to bits if not pulled together by God, it is irritated at the requirement to attend to him — even despite the numerous professional aids to listening the period boasts. Accordingly, a very aetiolated desire to hear God's words comes out repeatedly in a fretful comedy of weariness.
Lesel Dawson
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- January 2009
- ISBN:
- 9780199266128
- eISBN:
- 9780191708688
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199266128.003.0002
- Subject:
- Literature, 16th-century and Renaissance Literature, Women's Literature
This chapter offers an introduction to medical ideas about lovesickness and the ways in which these are represented in literature. It is divided into three sections. The first section details the ...
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This chapter offers an introduction to medical ideas about lovesickness and the ways in which these are represented in literature. It is divided into three sections. The first section details the physiological construction of lovesickness, cataloguing its origins, symptoms, and cures, and suggesting how the four aetiologies of lovesickness offer different ways of conceptualizing desire and its bodily impact. This is followed by a consideration of historical accounts of individuals experiencing the disease in diaries, letters, and doctors' case notes. The final section examines the self-fashioning of the melancholy lover; it details the social and intellectual connotations of lovesick display and analyses the disease's psychic and seductive functions. Lovesickness is shown to be an effective tool in courtship, providing an important means of expression desire and of engineering its fulfilment.Less
This chapter offers an introduction to medical ideas about lovesickness and the ways in which these are represented in literature. It is divided into three sections. The first section details the physiological construction of lovesickness, cataloguing its origins, symptoms, and cures, and suggesting how the four aetiologies of lovesickness offer different ways of conceptualizing desire and its bodily impact. This is followed by a consideration of historical accounts of individuals experiencing the disease in diaries, letters, and doctors' case notes. The final section examines the self-fashioning of the melancholy lover; it details the social and intellectual connotations of lovesick display and analyses the disease's psychic and seductive functions. Lovesickness is shown to be an effective tool in courtship, providing an important means of expression desire and of engineering its fulfilment.
Lesel Dawson
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- January 2009
- ISBN:
- 9780199266128
- eISBN:
- 9780191708688
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199266128.003.0004
- Subject:
- Literature, 16th-century and Renaissance Literature, Women's Literature
It is often claimed that whereas male lovesickness is classified as a form of melancholy—a malady associated with creativity, interiority, and intellect—the female version is considered a disorder of ...
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It is often claimed that whereas male lovesickness is classified as a form of melancholy—a malady associated with creativity, interiority, and intellect—the female version is considered a disorder of the womb. This chapter challenges this model, arguing that female lovesickness is a species of melancholy which can be depicted, not only as a passionate illness which degenerates into madness, but also as a spiritual and cerebral affliction. It offers examples of early modern Englishwomen who fashioned themselves as melancholy in their diaries, portraits, and letters, and outlines the many ways that melancholy and lovesick women appear in literature. In Beaumont and Fletcher's The Maid's Tragedy and Ford's The Broken Heart, the lovesick woman's vocabulary of devotion paradoxically facilitates the expression of otherwise impermissible emotions, such as anger and sexual frustration. Revenge is achieved through self-punishment, in which masochism acts as a displaced form of aggression.Less
It is often claimed that whereas male lovesickness is classified as a form of melancholy—a malady associated with creativity, interiority, and intellect—the female version is considered a disorder of the womb. This chapter challenges this model, arguing that female lovesickness is a species of melancholy which can be depicted, not only as a passionate illness which degenerates into madness, but also as a spiritual and cerebral affliction. It offers examples of early modern Englishwomen who fashioned themselves as melancholy in their diaries, portraits, and letters, and outlines the many ways that melancholy and lovesick women appear in literature. In Beaumont and Fletcher's The Maid's Tragedy and Ford's The Broken Heart, the lovesick woman's vocabulary of devotion paradoxically facilitates the expression of otherwise impermissible emotions, such as anger and sexual frustration. Revenge is achieved through self-punishment, in which masochism acts as a displaced form of aggression.
Jennifer Radden
- Published in print:
- 2002
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780195151657
- eISBN:
- 9780199849253
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195151657.003.0010
- Subject:
- Philosophy, General
This chapter presents Timothie Bright's discussion of melancholy. Born midway through the 16th century in Cambridge, England, Bright wrote several medical works, the best remembered of which was his ...
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This chapter presents Timothie Bright's discussion of melancholy. Born midway through the 16th century in Cambridge, England, Bright wrote several medical works, the best remembered of which was his Treatise of Melancholy (1568), from which the following excerpts are taken. Bright divides melancholia the disease from the melancholy humor, and he distinguishes between instances of the melancholy humor that are natural and those that are unnatural. As a result of bodily heating of various kinds, the natural melancholy humor could become unnatural, and thus lead to melancholia the disease.Less
This chapter presents Timothie Bright's discussion of melancholy. Born midway through the 16th century in Cambridge, England, Bright wrote several medical works, the best remembered of which was his Treatise of Melancholy (1568), from which the following excerpts are taken. Bright divides melancholia the disease from the melancholy humor, and he distinguishes between instances of the melancholy humor that are natural and those that are unnatural. As a result of bodily heating of various kinds, the natural melancholy humor could become unnatural, and thus lead to melancholia the disease.
Jennifer Radden
- Published in print:
- 2002
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780195151657
- eISBN:
- 9780199849253
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195151657.003.0090
- Subject:
- Philosophy, General
This chapter presents Robert Burton's discussion of melancholy. Burton's education at Oxford began when he was only sixteen. He was admitted as a commoner at Brasenose College and then in 1599 was ...
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This chapter presents Robert Burton's discussion of melancholy. Burton's education at Oxford began when he was only sixteen. He was admitted as a commoner at Brasenose College and then in 1599 was elected a student of Christ Church College. In 1614 he was awarded his bachelor of divinity, after which he was both tutor and librarian at Christ Church College, as well as serving as vicar of Saint Thomas' Church in 1616 and rector of Seagrave in Leicestershire in 1630. Once established at Christ Church, he devoted himself to the research and writing that led in 1621 to the first edition of The Anatomy of Melancholy. The Anatomy is unmatched as a compendium of human failing, folly, anxiety, suffering, and variation, written in a style that is so eccentric yet so acute and vital that it is one of the most beloved of English books.Less
This chapter presents Robert Burton's discussion of melancholy. Burton's education at Oxford began when he was only sixteen. He was admitted as a commoner at Brasenose College and then in 1599 was elected a student of Christ Church College. In 1614 he was awarded his bachelor of divinity, after which he was both tutor and librarian at Christ Church College, as well as serving as vicar of Saint Thomas' Church in 1616 and rector of Seagrave in Leicestershire in 1630. Once established at Christ Church, he devoted himself to the research and writing that led in 1621 to the first edition of The Anatomy of Melancholy. The Anatomy is unmatched as a compendium of human failing, folly, anxiety, suffering, and variation, written in a style that is so eccentric yet so acute and vital that it is one of the most beloved of English books.
J. F. Bernard
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- May 2019
- ISBN:
- 9781474417334
- eISBN:
- 9781474453752
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474417334.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Shakespeare Studies
What’s so funny about melancholy? Iconic as Hamlet is, Shakespearean comedy showcases an extraordinary reliance on melancholy that ultimately reminds us of the porous demarcation between laughter and ...
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What’s so funny about melancholy? Iconic as Hamlet is, Shakespearean comedy showcases an extraordinary reliance on melancholy that ultimately reminds us of the porous demarcation between laughter and sorrow. This richly contextualized study of Shakespeare’s comic engagement with sadness contends that the playwright rethinks melancholy through comic theatre and, conversely, re-theorizes comedy through melancholy. In fashioning his own comic interpretation of the humour, Shakespeare distils an impressive array of philosophical discourses on the matter, from Aristotle to Robert Burton, and as a result, transforms the theoretical afterlife of both notions. The book suggests that the deceptively potent sorrow at the core of plays such as The Comedy of Errors, Twelfth Night, or The Winter’s Tale influences modern accounts of melancholia elaborated by Sigmund Freud, Judith Butler, and others. What’s so funny about melancholy in Shakespearean comedy? It might just be its reminder that, behind roaring laughter, one inevitably finds the subtle pangs of melancholy.Less
What’s so funny about melancholy? Iconic as Hamlet is, Shakespearean comedy showcases an extraordinary reliance on melancholy that ultimately reminds us of the porous demarcation between laughter and sorrow. This richly contextualized study of Shakespeare’s comic engagement with sadness contends that the playwright rethinks melancholy through comic theatre and, conversely, re-theorizes comedy through melancholy. In fashioning his own comic interpretation of the humour, Shakespeare distils an impressive array of philosophical discourses on the matter, from Aristotle to Robert Burton, and as a result, transforms the theoretical afterlife of both notions. The book suggests that the deceptively potent sorrow at the core of plays such as The Comedy of Errors, Twelfth Night, or The Winter’s Tale influences modern accounts of melancholia elaborated by Sigmund Freud, Judith Butler, and others. What’s so funny about melancholy in Shakespearean comedy? It might just be its reminder that, behind roaring laughter, one inevitably finds the subtle pangs of melancholy.
Anthony Ossa-Richardson
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- October 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780691157115
- eISBN:
- 9781400846597
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Princeton University Press
- DOI:
- 10.23943/princeton/9780691157115.003.0004
- Subject:
- History, Ancient History / Archaeology
This chapter considers reactions against the conventional view of the oracles as they appear in theories of natural causation. Natural cause is defined as one that does not depend on created spirits. ...
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This chapter considers reactions against the conventional view of the oracles as they appear in theories of natural causation. Natural cause is defined as one that does not depend on created spirits. Two such causes in particular cover the great majority of positions on the pagan oracles: inflamed melancholy and terrestrial exhalations. Very few early modern writers claimed unequivocally that natural causes alone could account for the oracles. The claim, when it was made, turned on a notion of natura that extended across the entire field of apparent marvels and came into close contact with the divinity, since it was unmediated by the activity of demons. This posed a serious problem to the intellectual edifice sketched in the previous chapter: since natura is always the same, a naturalist account of divination was intrinsically unable to distinguish between the pagan oracles and Christian prophecy—a distinction on which the Christian narrative depended. This is why the oracles of the natural philosophers were rather abstract and lifeless entities, and why those who argued against the picture increasingly invoked particular facts about the oracles, as they were known from Christian or pagan history.Less
This chapter considers reactions against the conventional view of the oracles as they appear in theories of natural causation. Natural cause is defined as one that does not depend on created spirits. Two such causes in particular cover the great majority of positions on the pagan oracles: inflamed melancholy and terrestrial exhalations. Very few early modern writers claimed unequivocally that natural causes alone could account for the oracles. The claim, when it was made, turned on a notion of natura that extended across the entire field of apparent marvels and came into close contact with the divinity, since it was unmediated by the activity of demons. This posed a serious problem to the intellectual edifice sketched in the previous chapter: since natura is always the same, a naturalist account of divination was intrinsically unable to distinguish between the pagan oracles and Christian prophecy—a distinction on which the Christian narrative depended. This is why the oracles of the natural philosophers were rather abstract and lifeless entities, and why those who argued against the picture increasingly invoked particular facts about the oracles, as they were known from Christian or pagan history.
Ian Simpson Ross
- Published in print:
- 1995
- Published Online:
- November 2003
- ISBN:
- 9780198288213
- eISBN:
- 9780191596827
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/0198288212.003.0024
- Subject:
- Economics and Finance, History of Economic Thought
Smith's last illness is described, along with his final order to have his unfinished manuscripts burned shortly before he died on 17 July 1790. His character is summed up as two‐sided: benevolent yet ...
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Smith's last illness is described, along with his final order to have his unfinished manuscripts burned shortly before he died on 17 July 1790. His character is summed up as two‐sided: benevolent yet prudent, also firm and decisive, from one point of view; but from another darker one, that of a melancholy or, at times, volatile personality, subject to psychosomatic illness arising from his intense concentration on chains of abstract ideas. Nevertheless, he remained a tireless inquirer into human nature, particularly its emotional range, and into its expressive forms and institutions. His free‐market system showed, he believed, how people in a relatively early phase of commerce and manufacturing might prosper within a framework of justice and equality before the law. He thought that self‐interest was centrally involved in economic transactions, but also held that the happiness of others is necessary to us, and he devoted his last years to moral philosophy, believing that he might help us aspire for virtue rather than wealth, and so become members of a truly civil society.Less
Smith's last illness is described, along with his final order to have his unfinished manuscripts burned shortly before he died on 17 July 1790. His character is summed up as two‐sided: benevolent yet prudent, also firm and decisive, from one point of view; but from another darker one, that of a melancholy or, at times, volatile personality, subject to psychosomatic illness arising from his intense concentration on chains of abstract ideas. Nevertheless, he remained a tireless inquirer into human nature, particularly its emotional range, and into its expressive forms and institutions. His free‐market system showed, he believed, how people in a relatively early phase of commerce and manufacturing might prosper within a framework of justice and equality before the law. He thought that self‐interest was centrally involved in economic transactions, but also held that the happiness of others is necessary to us, and he devoted his last years to moral philosophy, believing that he might help us aspire for virtue rather than wealth, and so become members of a truly civil society.
