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Some Notes on Burton's Erasmus

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2018

Rosalie L. Colie
Rosalie L. Colie*
Affiliation:
University of Toronto
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Abstract

In another place, I take for granted that Robert Burton was engaged, among other things, in shaping his Anatomy of Melancholy within the traditions of formal paradoxy. Internal evidence sufficiently supports that view, and Burton's reliance upon Erasmus, Rabelais, and Montaigne, all three great practitioners within the paradoxical mode, is apparent in his choice of subject matter, style, and tone. One might even postulate a ‘Lucianic’ heritage for a tonal genre (in which belong, e.g., Erasmus, More, Alberti, Rabelais, Ariosto, Cervantes, Burton, Swift, Sterne, Diderot, Voltaire, and Joyce), a deliberate and demarcated tradition of irony in which paradoxy is naturally accommodated. In such a tradition, obviously, Burton has an important place. This note is not, unfortunately, concerned with speculations in literary systematics; here, I want merely to point out a pretty instance of Burton's uses of ‘official’ paradoxy, and to supply some hard evidence that he knew exactly what he was doing in his own paradoxical endeavor.

Type
Research Article
Information
Renaissance Quarterly , Volume 20 , Issue 3 , Autumn 1967 , pp. 335 - 341
Copyright
Copyright © Renaissance Society of America 1967

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References

1 See my Paradoxia Epidemica (Princeton, 1966), pp. 430-460

2 For some handy explanations of the traditions of paradoxy and mock-encomia, see Pease, A. S., ‘Things without Honour,’ CP, XXI (1926), 27–42;Google Scholar Malloch, A. E., ‘The Technique and Function of the Renaissance Paradox,’ SP, LIII (1965), 191–203;Google Scholar Henry Knight, Miller, ‘The Paradoxical Encomium with Special Reference to its Vogue in England, 1600-1800,’ MP, LIII (1956), 145–178.Google Scholar

3 Gibson, S. and Needham, F. R. D., ‘Lists of Burton's Library,’ Oxford Bibliographical Society, Proceedings and Papers, I (1922-26), 222–246.Google Scholar

4 I wish to join the chorus of thankers of Miss Marjorie Wynne, who, on the fly, reported the existence in the Beinecke Library of this volume.

5 D. Erasmi, Roterodami De duplici copia rerutn ac verborum commentarii duo. De ratione studii ac instituendi pueros commentarii totidem. De puero Iesu concio scholastica, et quaedam carmina ad eandeum rem pertinentia (Paris: Badius, 1512).Google Scholar

6 Handwriting is always tricky: what one can say is that one of the hands in this volume is not unlike other notations, unequivocally in Burton's hand, and accords reasonably well with the holograph letter, written much later, in the British Museum (Add. Ms. 49381, ff. 1-2). William Burton's signature and token flower appear on the Froben colophon as well.

….Si plus aequo laudetur (saith Erasmus) cristas erigit, exuit hotninem, Deum se putat. (1621, p. 165; I, 2, 333,14)

7 ‘Democritus to the Reader’ is separately paginated: the book begins to number again at I, i, 1, 1.

8 Sig. a4.

9 The Anatomy of Melancholy (Oxford: Lichfield, 1621), p. 49; I, i, 3, 2.

10 Encomium, g2.

11 Sed ipsa stultissima sim, planeque digna, quam multis cachinnis rideat Democritus, si pergam popularium stulticiarum, et insaniarum formas enumerare (Encomium, n2).