Rhetorical Structure and Function in The Anatomy of Melancholy

Abstract

In writing The Anatomy of Melancholy Robert Burton was working within the system of classical rhetoric as revived in the Renaissance, specifically the epideictic genus. A juxtaposition of the topics, arguments, and tripartite form employed by Burton with the treatment of epideictic in Aristotle's Rhetoric, as well as with aspects of the Roman and Hellenistic rhetorical traditions, shows how Burton has playfully adapted Renaissance conceptions of epideictic rhetoric for encyclopaedic, satirical, and self-expressive purposes. The function of rhetoric in the Anatomy is both to 'dissect' the corpus of knowledge about melancholy and to 'show forth' the author's own melancholic condition. he whose eloquence is like to some great torrent that rolls down rocks and 'disdains a bridge' and carves out its own banks for itself, will sweep the judge from his feet, struggle as he may, and force him to go whither he bears him. This is the orator that will call the dead to life. Quintilian, Institutio oratoria, 12.10.61 'tis not my study or intent to compose neatly, which an Orator requires, but to expresse my selfe readily & plainely as it happens. So that as a River runnes sometimes precipitate and swift, then dull and slow; now as the present subject required, or as at that time I was affected. "Democritus Junior to the Reader", Anatomy of Melancholy, 1.18.6-12.1 lrThe research for this article was undertaken with the support of the British Academy Arts and Humanities Research Board. I would like to thank Quentin Skinner for his guidance and encouragement, as well as for reading drafts of this paper. I am also most grateful to Cathy Curtis, Peter Burke and Christopher Swales for their helpful comments and criticisms; any inaccuracies that remain are my own. All references to the Anatomy are to the recent critical edition unless stated otherwise: Robert Burton, The

Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century Falconry Manuals: Technical Writing with a Classical Rhetorical Influence

“…Consequently, even though Ramist theories, as well as empirical argumentation rather than traditional classical invention, were increasingly the norm during the Renaissance, numerous authorities kept Ciceronian invention alive. Gowland [28], for instance, makes a case for the use of classical rhetoric in Burton's The Anatomy of Melancholy. In fact, Howell asserts that the five canons "were everywhere accepted in Elizabethan England as the constituents of ancient rhetorical theory" [29, p. 78].…”

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“…Some work has occurred on Renaissance and 17th-century medical writing. Agnus Gowland, in "Rhetorical Structure and Function in The Anatomy of Melancholy" (2001) [74], argues that Robert Burton draws on the epideictic genus from various classical traditions to dissect the corpus of knowledge on melancholia. Nancy G. Siraisi, in "Oratory and Rhetoric in Renaissance Medicine" (2004) [75], argues that academic medical instruction at the time combined science and rhetoric and required considerable skill on the part of medical faculty to speak to students on a variety of humanistic and scientific topics.…”