Anatomy of Melancholy, 287-292 — Pt. I, Sec. 2, Mem. III, Subsect. 14 — Philautia, or Self-love, Vainglory, Praise, Honour, Immoderate Applause, Pride, overmuch Joy, etc., Causes

Whatever you call it, “overmuch Joy” and love of “immoderate applause” being my personal favorites, pride is no good thing: “This acceptable disease, which so sweetly sets upon us, ravisheth our senses, lulls our souls asleep, puffs up our hearts as so many bladders.” I really wanted to draw a puffed up bladder for this […]

Anatomy of Melancholy, 189: Pt. I, Sec. 2, Mem. I, Subs. 2: A Digression of the Nature of Spirits, Bad Angels, or Devils, and how they cause Melancholy

Yup, I am still hung up on the devils section: And yet for all this Thomas, Albertus, and most, hold that there be far more angels than devils. I was at a party recently where everyone knew each other very well, and I knew only two people and not very well. Also I was grumpy. It […]

LIST: Famous Actors Who Once Appeared in Unsolved Mysteries Reenactments

1. Matthew McConaughey: Episode 141 (Season 5, Episode 12) 2. Daniel Dae Kim: Episode 169 (Season 6, Episode 5) 3. Cheryl Hines: Episode 278 (Season 9, Episode 15) Link to Matthew McConaughey’s segment here but fyi I think this particular unsolved mystery is really kind of disturbing even when delivered via a cheesy reenactment starring the “alright alright alright” […]

A of M, 143-146: Melancholy in Disposition, improperly so called. Equivocations

This little section is about sinking into a transient melancholy due to, say, a fleabite versus the “continuate disease” of melancholy. Burton does not have much patience for “errant,” or transient, melancholy, and he would prefer people stop calling “oops I stubbed my toe and it sucks” melancholy at all: Melancholy in this sense is the character […]

Pictures of Theories: Language Acquisition Device

Language Acquisition Device (LAD), Linguistics:  First proposed by Noam Chomsky in the 1960s, the LAD concept is an instinctive mental capacity which enables an infant to acquire and produce language. It is a component of the nativist theory of language. This theory asserts that humans are born with the instinct or “innate facility” for acquiring […]

Pictures of Theories: Deconstruction

  Deconstruction, literary studies: Deconstruction is a method of literary analysis with roots in the work of philosopher Jacques Derrida. According to Wikipedia, “This article has multiple issues.”   Deconstruction is not a dismantling of the structure of a text, but a demonstration that it has already dismantled itself.  – J. Hillis Miller, “Stevens’ Rock […]

Read with me!

When a giant angry turnip was elected president of the United States in the apocalyptic year that was 2016, I started to feel a little down. Naturally my response was to buy an unabridged copy of Robert Burton’s The Anatomy of Melancholy. My get-out-of-bed-without-crying-plan is to read a little piece of this gargantuan lump of knowledge daily, and I will illustrate it as I go.