PhD Dropout / Master sounds better than Doctor anyhow, right? / Comics / Illustrated Read-alongs / Currently The Anatomy of Melancholy
“They do persecute beasts so long, till in the end they themselves degenerate into beasts.” Once again, I was about to move on from this section and make some goddamned progress, but then I didn’t because I drew another goddamned picture. Maybe “immoderate desire of hawking and hunting” is an archaic source of melancholic debauchery, […]
I can thank (and blame) the Kafkaesque, slow-boiling frog of a year that was 2020-2021 for many new habits and obsessions. A few are good, like running so that I don’t lose my everloving mind, but honestly running might be the only good one. They mostly fall into a more embarrassing category best labeled Weird, […]
Note to self: You skipped Subsection 3, a “Division of Perturbations” because it seemed to make more sense to draw individual perturbations before drawing the catalogue. I guess? Subsection 3 didn’t make much sense, really. Sometimes Burton says there are four perturbations but goes on to name three, and then sometimes there are seven or […]
I didn’t draw “immoderate exercise” because who is ever melancholy from exercising too much? I really can’t identify with that at all. All I got from that bit was a good quote to whip out the next time your marathon-addict friend is espousing the joys of running until you feel like you are going […]
There are a lot more witches in this book than I thought there would be. Some witchy quotes: Erricus, King of Sweden, had an enchanted cap, by virtue of which, and some magical murmur or whispering terms, he could command spirits, trouble the air, and make the wind stand which way he would, insomuch that when […]
A little homage to one of literature’s greatest melancholics, Bartleby. I haven’t been able to read or draw much this summer, but I’m hoping to have more time for it all going forward. Huzzah. I’m not on Facebook much anymore, because who is? But you can follow my stuff on Instagram – @devon_isadevon
When the matter is diverse and confused, how should it otherwise be but that the species should be diverse and confused? This post is part of a long, tedious, and very illustrated read-along of Robert Burton’s The Anatomy of Melancholy. More info here and follow along on Facebook here. Illustrations posted via devon_isadevon on Instagram.
Were you born under Saturn? Do you live in a climate that is too cold? Too hot? Too moist? Are you too moist generally? Is your head unusually small? These are just a few of the many sources of a saturnine temperament. Here Burton also addresses the hotly debated topic of whether melancholy affects […]
Burton’s translation: A term of life is set to every man, Which is but short, and pass it no one can. So I drew a little memento mori for you to brighten your day 😀 No better way to draw in readership than reminding everyone of the brevity of life, eh? I am into memento […]
Melancholy, cold and dry, thick, black, sour, begotten of the more feculent part of nourishment, and purged from the spleen, is a bridle to the other two hot humours, blood and choler, preserving them in the blood, and nourishing the bones. These four humours have some analogy with the four elements, and to the four ages of man.
This section is for people who have a hard time telling the difference between dogs and people. Also, I apologize from the dank, dark bottom of my heart for my dog drawings. I am not very good at drawing dogs, but apparently that is not going to stop me from trying. It is possible that I […]
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 […]
Lycanthropia, which Avicenna calls cucubuth, others lupinam insaniam, or wolf-madness, when men run howling about graves and fields in the night, and will not be persuaded but that they are wolves, or some such beasts. Aetius and Paulus call it a kind of melancholy; but I should rather refer it to madness, as most do. […]
The diseases of the mind, forasmuch as they have their chief seat in the organs of the head, are commonly repeated amongst the diseases of the head, which are divers, and vary much according to their size. (138) Some days you just can’t shake the frogs off your brain. This post is part of […]
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.