University of Bucharest Review. Literary and Cultural Studies Series (Dec 2016)
The City and Its Therapeutic Dimension in Robert Burton’s The Anatomy of Melancholy
Abstract
My concern in this paper is the inclusion of the city among early modern prescriptions for attaining mental, bodily and moral health that takes place in Robert Burton’s The Anatomy of Melancholy (1621). My argument is two-fold: first, I would like to suggest that the city is conceived in Burton’s treatise as a therapeutic space that is addressed to several psycho-somatic disorders – among which melancholy occupies a privileged place – and is able to counter the deleterious effects of ‘natural’ air through ‘artificial’ means; and secondly, I would like to shed light upon the manner in which this particular remedy combines several philosophical and medical approaches to the relationship between self and environment and brings together their respective therapeutic strategies. What I would like to draw attention to is the fact that the recommendation to reside in or visit particular cities is based, on the one hand, on the Hippocratic-Galenic approach to healing the mind and body by acting on the latter’s material qualities via the six non-naturals and, on the other, on Stoic techniques of training the imagination to select and contemplate those external objects that trigger adequate passions and build virtue. I would thus like to emphasize the intricacies of the syncretism which the question of the city as remedy produces and, as such, to argue for the particularity of this cure.
