PhD Dropout / Master sounds better than Doctor anyhow, right? / Comics / Illustrated Read-alongs / Currently The Anatomy of Melancholy
Pretty much more of the same here, although Burton does give us some advice at last, speaking as “mad” Democritus: It were enough to make them wise, if they would but consider the mutability of this world, and how it wheels about, nothing being firm and sure… If men would attempt no more than what […]
That is not a typo. Sottish, not Scottish, meaning like a sot – stupid, possibly intoxicated. Continuing with the uplifting topic of the world’s madness, Burton describes the various failings and hypocrisies of so-called “wise men.” He calls Pythagoras a half-wizard half-witch and that sort of thing, concluding: “If these men now, that held Zenodotus’ […]
Okay, so the world is a fool’s head, and now Robert Burton explains why: Shall I tell you the reason of it? Fortune and Virtue, Wisdom and Folly, their seconds, upon a time contended in the Olympics; every man thought that Fortune and Folly would have the worst, and pitied their cases; but it fell […]
The Anatomy of Melancholy may ameliorate your melancholy, but it may also make it worse, so watch out! The same goes for this blog, I suppose: Yet one caution let me give by the way to my present or future reader, who is actually melancholy, that he read not the symptoms or prognostics in this following […]
Wow, so once again I am finding that Burton’s tome is totally loaded with awesome metaphors that lend themselves very well to overly literal illustrations. It is hard to choose just one. But for today, a melancholic rock, or a rocky melancholy? Because I don’t know about you, but the news this week has me […]
I narrowed my picture ideas down to these two quotes from my reading today: I might indeed (had I wisely done), observed that precept of the poet, Nonumque premature in annum [keep back your work for nine years before printing], and have taken more care: or, as Alexander the physician would have done by lapis lazuli, […]
In these four pages, Burton criticizes readers and critics who evaluate books “not by the character but by the outer garb.” So I drew some books playing dress up. Also, “If you like not this, get you to another inn” is a useful insult fit for revival. “I resolve, if you like not my writing, […]
This is a picture of a dunghill, because Burton just won’t shut up about them. It feels like there is at least one dunghill on every page. “And for those other faults of barbarism, Doric dialect, extemporanean style, tautologies, apish imitation, a rhapsody of rags gathered together from several dung-hills, excrements of authors, toys and […]
In the spirit of pages 20-23, in which writers are described as “all thieves” who “scrape Ennius’ dung-hills,” I will write less putid bloggery from here on: more pictures and fewer words – sometimes none at all – unless I have an imposthume that I needs must drain. A really great four pages here though, […]
My drawing for pages 18-19 did not turn out well. If you try draw a spleen in sunglasses, it will generally look like one of the California Raisins. This is just a piece of advice in case you ever find yourself in a similar situation. In my defense, I was having a bad day. After dropping […]
In these two pages, Robert Burton fills us in on the mostly unknown details of the life of Democritus (Senior). Apparently he retired to the suburbs. Burton then describes the character of “Democritus Junior” aka Robert Burton. It sounds like Burton is a melancholic type, surprise surprise, who likes to be alone with his books, […]
Over the weekend I heard from a few people who are still endeavoring to get their hands on a copy of the COMPLETE AND UNABRIDGED Anatomy of Melancholy, so I held off on reading for a few days. But I positively cannot wait to get moving, so here I go with a slow start, beginning with The Very […]
One reason I did not do incredibly well in grad school was that I am not very good at writing about poetry. Honestly, I had a lot going on, but let’s blame poetry. I cannot write about a poem without killing it, like a real bloody mess, and afterwards the detective says that clearly the murderer […]
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.