Description
This is the second volume of the Clarendon edition of Robert Burton’s The Anatomy of Melancholy, containing the text and textual apparatus for ‘The Second Partition’. A third volume of text and two volumes of commentary will follow. In ‘The Second Partition’, Burton treats the spectrum of cures for melancholy, generally following the organization and analysis of symptoms and causes of the disorder as presented in ‘The First Partition’. Here is found Burton’s remarkable synthesis of cultural geography and climatic influences on temperament in the ‘Digression of the Ayre’ and his long excursion in the consolatio tradition. The final two sections of the partition present remedies from physics and surgery.
