Some Notes on Burton's Erasmus

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.