Encyclopedism in <i>Anatomy of Melancholy</i>

This paper considers the implications of Burton's "encyclopedism" defined here as the condition of a work where writing is a form of therapy compelled by disease. The notion of encyclopedism suggests the ways in which the encyclopedia serves as a compendious alter-ego to Burton's book. Reading Anatomy in the context of an encyclopedic tradition transformed by Burton's insistence that his writing is a "foolish labor" intended to ward off melancholy reminds us how fully he reimagines the Renaissance aesthetic of scholarly exhaustion. In this regard, Burtonian anatomy may be said to offer an alternative, playful and subversive, to the encyclopedic claims of Baconian instauration.