The Politics of Melancholy from Spenser to Milton

Adam Kitzes

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9780415976282
• eBook ISBN: 9781135503079
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

During the so-called Age of Melancholy, many writers invoked both traditional and new conceptualizations of the disease in order to account for various types of social turbulence, ranging from discontent and factionalism to civil war. Writing about melancholy became a way to explore both the causes and preventions of political disorder, on both specific and abstract levels. Thus, at one and the same moment, a writer could write about melancholy to discuss specific and ongoing political crises and to explore more generally the principles which generate political conflicts in the first place. In the course of developing a traditional discourse of melancholy of its own, English writers appropriated representations of the disease - often ineffectively - in order to account for the political turbulence during the civil war and Interregnum periods

Index

A

A New Sect of Religion Descryed, Called Adamites (Bray), melancholy malcontents and religious sects, 167

Abbott, Archbishop, religious enthusiasm, 157

Africa, 153

Agamben, Giorgio, 67, 159

Age of Enthusiasm, 19, 155–156

Age of Reason, 19, 155–156

alienation, melancholy and, 15, 55, 61–62

Allen, W.

“New Notions and new affected Modes and Phrases,” 165

Anatomy of Melancholy (Burton), 123–150, 138–150, 147

Anabaptists, 142, 147

ancient Egypt and, 135–136

Anglican church, 142

Arminianism, 145

Ars Poetica (Horace), 137

Articles Agreed upon by the Archbishops and Bishops of Both Provinces and the whole Cleargie, 146

artisan classes and, 148

as asymmetrical, 138–150

Bedlam hospital, 147–148

Brownists, 142, 147

Calvinism, 142, 145, 146

Catholics, 139, 142

Church of England, 145, 146, 147

conflicting loyalties and, 149

Democritus Jr. as persona, 129, 140

“Democritus Jr. to the Reader,” 18, 124, 127, 129–138, 139

ecclesiastical doctrine, 145

ecclesiastical institutions and, 144

economics and, 135, 136

ekphrasis, 125

encyclopedic method, 127

England’s public troubles in, 134

England’s theological problems, 140

Erasmus, reference to, 145–146

Familists, 147

governments and, 134

Heraclitus, 140, 150

Hercules, 137, 138, 144, 145

heroic figures, 135

idolatry and, 141

illiterates and, 143–144, 149

illness and, 139

kingdoms and horticulture, 134

Laud, William, Archbishop of Canterbury, 128, 146

as literature, 126, 127

Luther, Martin, 143, 144

Lutherans, 142

madness and, 125, 138, 139

madness and desire to be Christ-like, 148

madness of the prophet, 149

madness of the wo...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction Black Humor
• Section I The Production of Melancholy as a Discourse
• Section II Melancholy and the Question of Government
• Section III The Distractions of the Times
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index