R obert B urton and the problems of polymathy

R obert B urton called his period ‘this scribling age’, in which the copiousness of printed matter and the multitude of authors caused problems both of discernment – how to distinguish true scholars from intellectual quacks? – and of quantity: how can the scholar hope to master the ‘vast C haos and confusion of B ookes’? This article addresses B urton's engagement with these questions, and examines both his attempt to establish a polymathic persona, and the relationship of the A natomy to other compendious genres of the period. Section II of this essay compares B urton's versions of polymathy with J ohannes W ower's D e polymathia tractatio (1603), showing how, in both the A natomy and his academic play, P hilosophaster , B urton contrasts the true polymath with the figure of the ‘polypragmatist’, representing a kind of miscellaneous learning which is shallow, deceptive, and mercenary. The third section examines B urton's relationship to another model of disciplinary multifariousness: the encyclopaedia, understood by B urton not as a genre, but as an ethos. In the fourth section, attention turns to polyantheas and other compendious literary genres. B urton's complaints about such shortcuts to learning are shown to participate in the controversy over the scholarly method which followed the publication of J ohn S elden's H istorie of T ithes (1618). The final section addresses polymathic style: B urton's ambiguous relationship to E rasmian copia , and the struggle to find a voice amid the clamour of citations demanded of the scholar.