Arrowsmith, Elmer Gantry, Dodsworth (Library of America)

Amazon.com

As the son and grandson of physicians, Sinclair Lewis had a store of experiences and imparted knowledge to draw upon for Arrowsmith.Published in 1925, after three years of anticipation, the book follows the life of Martin Arrowsmith, a rather ordinary fellow who gets his first taste of medicine at 14 as an assistant to the drunken physician in his home town. It is Leora Tozer who makes Martin's life extraordinary. With vitality and love, she urges him beyond the confines of the mundane to risk answering his true calling as a scientist and researcher. Not even her tragic death can extinguish her spirit or her impact on Martin's life.

Book Description

Written at the height of his powers in the 1920s, the three novels in this volume continue the vigorous unmasking of American middle-class life begun by Sinclair Lewis in Main Street and Babbitt. In Arrowsmith (1925) Lewis portrays the medical career of Martin Arrowsmith, a physician who finds his commitment to the ideals of his profession tested by the cynicism and opportunism he encounters in private practice, public health work, and scientific research. The novel reaches its climax as its hero faces his greatest challenges amid a deadly outbreak of plague on a Caribbean island.

Elmer Gantry (1927) aroused intense controversy with its brutal depiction of a hypocritical preacher in relentless pursuit of worldly pleasure and power. Through his satiric exposé of American religion, Lewis captured the growing cultural and political tension in the 1920s between the forces of secularism and fundamentalism.

Dodsworth (1929) follows Sam Dodsworth, a wealthy, retired Midwestern automobile manufacturer, as he travels through Europe with his increasingly restless wife, Fran. The novel intimately explores the unraveling of their marriage, while pitting the proud heritage of European culture against the rude vigor of American commercialism.

Download Description

This concise supplement to Sinclair Lewis's Arrowsmith helps students understand the overall structure of the work, actions and motivations of the characters, and the social and cultural perspectives of the author.

Customer Reviews:

An endless zigzag.......2007-03-22

Sinclair Lewis defines Martin Arrowsmith as `a young man who was in no degree a hero, who regarded himself as a seeker of truth, yet who stumbled and slid back all his life and bogged in every obvious morass.' He is `a snuffing beagle', who in his lifespan covered in this book never was in control of his destiny.

This book touches all kind of important themes:
- Commercialism and the religion of a scientist: `Knowledge is the greatest thing in the medical world, but it's no good whatever if you can't sell it.'
- Commercialism and profession: `Explain to a patient, also his stricken and anxious family, the hard work and thought you are giving to his case, and so make him feel that the good you have done to him, is even greater than the fee you plan to charge.'
- Public v. private health system: `to get rid of avoidable diseases and produce a healthy population is killing commercialization, making money. Therefore doctors must become public health officers.'
- Psycho-analysts as guess-scientists.
- General human problems: `the cruelty of nature kicking human beings by every gay device of moonlight and white limbs into heaving babies.
- Influence of the Church on the irrationality of the masses. Its battle against free-thinking.
- Personal problems: alcoholism, marriage.
None of these themes is properly developed.

The scientific basis of this book is very poor: fighting the plague with bacteriophages.
Into the bargain, there is virtually no plot: the human relations with friends, colleagues, professors or women are more or less accidental. Also, after a far too long itinerary, the story ends abruptly.

This book is a big disappointment and can only be recommended to Sinclair Lewis fans.

At last: Sinclair Lewis writes a hero.......2007-01-18

Sinclair Lewis is the bookend to F. Scott Fitzgerald. Both were born in Minnesota. Fitzgerald went to Princeton, Lewis to Yale. Both wrote their best books in the 1920s. Both drank, had women trouble, and turned bitter.

But Fitzgerald is everyone's favorite author --- even the high school kids who are clueless about metaphors swoon over "The Great Gatsby." You need an appreciation of satire to love Lewis; nobody does, and he goes unread.

It's understandable. What would you rather read --- a romantic tale about a poor boy's rise and violent death on the glittering shores of Long Island (Gatsby) or a withering take on narrow-minded life in the midwest (Main Street)? Who's more interesting --- a criminal who went to Oxford (Jay Gatsby) or a blowhard whose ambition is total conformity to soul-deadening values (George Babbitt)?

And yet. If you ask who describes America better, the more necessary writer is Sinclair Lewis. Main Street and Babbitt made his name, and most readers stop there. They shouldn't --- my wife, who once attended a one-room schoolhouse in Minnesota --- recently read "Main Street," and found it a very close description of life in our chic Manhattan neighborhood. Dodsworth --- later made into a toweringly great movie --- is as fine a love story as Fitzgerald ever dreamed up, and a lot more realistic one, at that. It Can't Happen Here is a powerful political drama with a subject that's not as far-fetched as you might think: how fascism comes to America.

And then there's Arrowsmith, which has an actual hero. Set in the midwest, it doesn't lack for satire; as Lewis depicts it, happiness in a small town seems to havbe the shelf life of about a year. And for a writer who won the Pulitzer Prize (and refused it), Lewis can write some dreadful dialogue. But the heroism thing --- that's compelling, and if you can move sprightly through the first half of the book, you'll find yourself getting excited and turning pages quickly for the right reason.

The hero is Martin Arrowsmith. We meet him in 1897, in the midwest town of Elk Mills ("a dowdy red-brick village, smelling of apples"), where he is the 14-year-old helper of the local doctor. Martin is prone to hero worship --- he sees magic in the old man's love of puttering in a lab. That ignites a dream in Martin, and so, seven years later, he's in medical school. There he falls under the spell of bacteriology professor Max Gottlieb: "tall, lean, aloof" --- and a Jew.

Gottlieb's love of science is pure; in an environment where many students and faculty think only of money, he alone seems to have ideals. Martin blossoms. But he's still a rube. He falls for a snooty graduate student in English and proposes marriage; later, he meets Leora, a nursing student, and proposes to her as well. His inept solution: to bring them together over lunch. Leora loves him more. They marry.

Leora's family is important --- in their tiny town of Wheatsylvania, North Dakota. But don't call them cultured: They lived in a house "that has a large phonograph but no books." Money talks, though. They bankroll Martin's first practice, and he settles into the life of a country doctor.

The novel is about the impossibility of "settling" --- as Martin climbs the medical ladder, he can't ignore research, his first love. He has a knack for it, and, to his delight, he's invited to join Gottlieb at a prestigious New York research institute. And now the novel kicks into high gear --- the plague has broken out in the Caribbean, and the vaccine that Arrowsmith has been working on might just be the cure.

Let me not spoil the thrill of these pages by revealing too much. Let's just say: success always comes at a price. And success doesn't always bring people what they most want. "Arrowsmith" is a book about the forces that fight to dominate us. As Lewis has it, that fight never ends.

"Arrowsmith" is smart about the world of research, and drug companies, and the modest ambitions of many men and women in white coats. It is also about the love of knowledge and the desire to heal; it gets the blood pumping. My brother --- one of our best AIDS researchers --- tells me that "Arrowsmith" is the book that made him decide to study medicine. Long before page 450, I could see why.

Not Bad but Not Great Either.......2006-10-16

The book traces the life of Martin Arrowsmith from his college days as a medical student through various careers ending with Martin in his mid-40's. The main themes of the book seem to be about the pursuit of money vs. the pursuit of science and about the character flaws of many research scientists and medical practitioners.

What's good about the book is that the plot is pretty interesting. I kept wanting to know what would happen next and how it would all turn out. Unfortunately, the ending wasn't so great. I end up agreeing with another reviewer that after the part on St. Hubert's island (about 3/4 of the way through) the rest is pretty dull--at least in comparison.

The main problem with the book is that the characters are one-dimensional, especially the female supporting characters. The main character, Martin, is too cold, heartless, and selfish to really get behind even though I don't think Lewis intended it. He marries two women during the course of the book. The first one, Leora, is a boring little dishrag. As for the second wife, I didn't see the point of introducing her so late in the book since she didn't really seem to motivate any purpose or action, other than Martin's continued heartlessness in leaving her and their son. However, since she was pretty much just a rich society type with no real personality or apparent goodness, I didn't have a whole lot of sympathy for her and the kid was like a non-entity so I didn't get too worked up about him either. I could go on, but that's the main problem with the book --- no characters that I could care about.

Recommended.......2006-07-21

I read below that several reviewers didn't appreciate this story even though it won a Pulitzer Prize. It may be true that some parts of the story are alittle drawn out. The "cure" for that is to perhaps "skip ahead" when the book is slow. But, the "good parts" are very "good" in that the themes are important subjects such as the evils of "materialism", the evils of "making money" at all costs, specifically the "bad" practice of doctors who are "in it just for the money", the importance of science and doing science to obtain "truth"----not for fame or monetary gain. See, these and other topics in the book are IMPORTANT TOPICS for our society and our culture. Thus, the book is deserving of it's Pulitzer Prize even though it may be a longish book. There is wit and humor in this book which make it easier to read and enjoy than if these qualities didn't exist. But, if you don't expect the book to be totally fascinating on every page, I think you'll enjoy the book and you'll eventually see the relevance and importance of this classic book. Just skip a few pages now and then and you'll be fine. I "read" this book as a book on tape. Email:boland7214@aol.

AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL.......2006-07-19

Lewis, in Arrowsmith, drew on his family's medical connections (his father, grandfather, older brother and an uncle were all physicians); his boyhood home in Sauk Centre, Minnesota, also served as his father's office, so he must have seen plenty of medicine in action. As others have described, we see the career of a man from boyhood to his early forties, as he transforms from general practitioner to research bacteriologist. Observations:
1). the character types described in medical school (students and faculty), small city medical practice and research facility
are uncannily true to form (my experience as physician), more so than can be attributed solely to hearing about it from one's relatives or informants (in Lewis's case, Dr. Morris Fishbein and
bacteriologist/science writer Paul de Kruif) - a mark of Lewis's
genius as an author.
2). Sinclair Lewis, as usual, has a tin ear for colloquial dialogue.
3). Arrowsmith is doomed, in each of his employments, by his perfectionism - others, who know better how to compromise, urge him to stay on and even how to do it, but his usual response is
"I'm licked!" and on to the next. His one true interest - bacteriological research - endures and grows and eventually pushes any humanity out of his life. Even his penultimate experience in combatting plague on a West Indian island is regretted, not for the death of his loyal wife, but because he compromised the scientific method in how he administered the bacteriophage therapy. In the end, his second wife and son are turned away for a monastic-like life in the wilds.
4). If this is an heroic character - and Lewis is on record as saying he thought so - then it says something about the author. There seems to be a lot of Sinclair Lewis in Martin Arrowsmith - both keen, but heartless, observers - and indeed, there are several parallels between the two - the weakness Arrowsmith has for the bottle at various stages, his scorn for religion and its practitioners, and his womanizing, for example. (Lewis was an alcoholic and was twice divorced). Lewis elsewhere has been described as a proto-feminist, but any sympathy he has for the female gender is a little like Marx's sympathy for the working class - more in theory than in practice (which may be said about feminism in general). The truly pathetic character in this novel is Dr. Arrowsmith's first wife, who sacrifices her own life and sticks to him in spite of his selfishness - and who winds up buried in a backyard on some fetid Caribbean island. Lewis and his hero both seem to try to develop some sympathy for her, without much success.
5). Lewis was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for this novel, but refused it. Evidence is that at least part of the basis for this was that he was miffed over the failure of Main Street and Babbitt to win it.

The Twentieth Century (Hist of Literature)

Average customer rating:

The Twentieth Century (Hist of Literature)
Various
Manufacturer: Penguin (Non-Classics)
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Medicine | Subjects | Books
ASIN: 0140177574

Average customer rating:

A Novel That Sings Like Middle American Opera
Not Lewis' Best
"Trophy Wife Dumps Hubby for Euro-Glitz"
A delightful read
It takes more than money to put you on "Easy Street"

Dodsworth
Sinclair Lewis
Manufacturer: Signet Classics
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Classics | General | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

Contemporary | General | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

ASIN: 0451525981

Customer Reviews:

A Novel That Sings Like Middle American Opera.......2005-07-22

Sinclair Lewis's 1929 novel DODSWORTH has staying power. It remains widely read. It was made into a Broadway stage play and then a 1936 motion picture nominated for seven Academy Awards. Imagine Giancarlo Menotti or Leonard Bernstein turning DODSWORTH into an opera of Midwestern passion and rhetoric! Published the year before its author became America's first winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, DODSWORTH repeats and intensifies a number of themes, at least one visible as early as 1912's HIKE AND THE AEROPLANE.

--The hero, automobile pioneer Samuel Dodsworth, wonders whether there a dimension to corporate life beyond sheer hard work and sticking to what one knows best. If so what is it? Travel? Leisure? The life of the mind? Good conversation? An absorbing hobby? A wife supportive of both his business and non-business quests?

--Is travel in the sense of sheer moving from here to there, from one place to another, out roughing it on the long trail, the ultimate solution? Must man move incessantly in order to be happy? In New York City, after some months in a more relaxed, contemplative Europe, Dodsworth saw Manhattan as "veritably the temple of a new divinity, the God of Speed." That God of Speed "demanded a belief that Going Somewhere, Going Quickly, Going Often, were in themselves holy and greatly to be striven for. A demanding God, this Speed, ... who once he had been offered a hundred miles an hour, straightway demanded a hundred and fifty" (Ch. 16).

--Midwestern Americans, makers of national greatness, at their best are regularly accused by Sinclair Lewis of being ordinary, conformist, risk avoiders. Without their Babbitry, their service clubs, their lodges and their main-line churches, American business leaders of the second magnitude are nothing, certainly not the legendary American pioneers of yesteryear! In some ways, Sam Dodsworth at 50 was therefore not a typical product of midwestern Zenith. He was "perfectly, the American Captain of Industry. ... (But) He was none of the things which most Europeans and many Americans expect in a leader of American industry. He was not a Babbitt, not a Rotarian, not an Elk, not a deacon. ... He knew, and thoroughly, the Babbitts and baseball fans, but only in business" (Ch.2). When Dodsworth opted for a few months of travel abroad before jumping back into the rat race, the man who bought out his company accused him of thinking that the purpose of life is loafing, whereas, "I tell you, Dodsworth, to me, work is a religion. ... Do big things" (Ch. 3). In London, even his wife Fran accused Dodworth (who had attended only one Rotary lunch in his life) of wanting to be "back in all the Rotarian joys of Zenith" (Ch. 11). Ross Ireland, a world traveler journalist told Dodsworth that one reason he loved America so passionately was that its "Elks and the Rotarians and the National Civic Federation are (not) any more grab-it-all than the English merchant" (Ch. 16). In discussing America's appeal to him with emerging lady friend Edith Cortwright, Sam Dodsworth ironically concluded that there are only two good reasons for American businessmen to travel abroad: to attend "a Rotary convention, or on a conducted tour where he's well insulated from furriners. Upsets him. Spoils his pleasure in his own greatness and knowledge!" (Ch. 31)

--Another recurring Sinclair Lewis riddle is the relation of husband to wife. Does a great American achiever really need a wife? If so, why? She dare not be his intellectual or entrepreneurial equal. She is permitted a few innocent distractions from running a household and raising children. Dancing and country clubbing are all right. Flirting with other men is frowned upon. And Dodsworth has absolutely no empathy for wife Fran as she frenetically reasserts her youth and her right not to be known as a grandmother. Above all, she has no right to carp at him, to put him in his place before his friends or hers.

DODSWORTH was written by Sinclair Lewis at the height of his powers. If Samuel Dodsworth is a brooding Prince Hamlet among American business leaders, he is a distinctly understated American Hamlet. Yes, Sam Dodsworth is more Socratic than a Babbitt or a Rotarian but less human than the troubled, seeking sinners of Graham Greene and Evelyn Waugh.

-OOO-

Not Lewis' Best.......2001-11-14

As a huge fan of "Babbitt" and especially "Main Street," I was happy to have come across an old edition of "Dodsworth" in a used bookstore. I tore into it eagerly but soon came up short. Neither satire like "Babbitt" nor as psychologically astute as "Main Street," the book reads like something from a middle school book club. The colloquialisms are corn-pone, far more prominent than in "Babbitt." Sam's reactions to his ocean voyages and to Europe are child-like, as are his inner responses to his wife's intolerable behaviors. The soap opera-ish inner monologues do not ring true, containing embarrassing proclamations about Great Europe and marital resolutions. Sam Dodsworth is painted as so naive, trusting, xenophobic and insecure that it is difficult to accept that he had an Ivy League education and was a master of business and industry.

The characterizations, in fact, strain credibility. How a man 50 years of age, president of an auto manufacturing company, can be so entirely innocent of the customs of the U.S. and the world outside his small city is baffling. He evidences no ability for making small talk, is ignorant of all current events and politics, is absent of even minor social charms with the rich-- all of these traits are overexaggerated for the purposes of the book. That Dodsworth and his wife have such a sudden disaffection and disenchantment ignores the certain difficulties of raising two children and navigating 20 years of maariage. It seems unlikely that Fran's pretentions emerge only on their trip. Certainly her preferences and choices in managing a family would have foreshadowed these problems.

A common criticism of Lewis's body of work is its uneveness. The depth and success of "Main Street" are contrasted with many of his later writings. I found "Dodsworth" too to read more like a novelization of an early screenplay, exaggerated and distorted for dramatic effect.

"Trophy Wife Dumps Hubby for Euro-Glitz".......2001-08-30

No doubt, this one is for your 'must read' list. When you put it down, you will feel you've lost contact with some great characters, that you've really got inside a marriage, that you've seen life the way it can be.

Samuel Dodsworth is an automobile magnate in the early years of the business. When his company is bought-out, he's left free at age 50, to do whatever he wants. But he has a slick, steel-willed, glamorous socialite for a wife and she has ambitions of climbing. He had always been "too busy to be discontented, and he managed to believe that Fran loved him.""(p.11) Sam gets roped into an extended European tour. Turns out, he's just an escort and backdrop for her movie. He experiences rising discomfort as she worms her way into European high society (or what she takes to be such). The trip gives both of them the first chance in decades to find out who they are---the common motif in literature and life of travelling to discover yourself---and they realize that they don't have much in common. Their European experiences transform them. On a visit back to the States, Dodsworth finds that he has changed; he can't regard his old friends, their old routines and concerns, and their ways with the same equanimity. They have become provincial and empty in his eyes, but what has he become ? He slowly comes to the conclusion that he's cut loose from all the went before, but has no direction for the future. He takes up several possibilities, but is caught among the rocks of loving the wayward Fran, wanting to do something useful in the world, and needing love himself. It's a long haul, but he makes it. Lewis skillfully keeps the psychological tension going to the very last page. Great stuff ! As for Fran, you'll have to read the book.

DODSWORTH is a psychological study of the first order, sincere, unpretentious and so well-written. It is not a satire on the lines of "Main Street", "Babbitt" or "Elmer Gantry", but a serious novel in the full sense of the word. Samuel Dodsworth comes across as a solid man of conservative nature who may have once been in a rut, but learns to think far more than people ever give him credit for, particularly his wife. He becomes flexible and learns to live, while Fran only continues to consume and demand. The plot plays itself out amidst a background of constant discussion as to what makes an American, what makes a European and what are the differences ? While this theme fascinated Henry James and numbers of other writers, it seems a bit passé in this day of the Web, 7 hour flights across 'the pond', massive tourism, MBAs in Europe and great museums in America. Still, it's part of the ambiance of the 1920s when this novel was written. The slow dissolution of the marriage, the contradictions of personality, the existence of strengths and weaknesses, aggressive and passive roles in both husband and wife, the psychological disintegration and re-building of a man's self-image-these are the main themes of DODSWORTH. It's one of the great American novels.

A delightful read.......2000-05-05

"Dodsworth" harkens to a day when you took time to read books, to savor words, descriptions, phrases, conversations between people. This is not a fast beach read, but a book to enjoy at a slow pace matching the flow of the text. Conversations go on for pages, with characters speaking in paragraphs, not sentences of 4 or 5 words. The book is an exploration of the mood and mind of Dodsworth, a retired American industrialist, still very much in the prime of his life, who is cajoled into taking his wife on an open-ended trip to Europe. The wife, battling the on-coming middle age years, flirts outrageously, and this leads to romantic entanglements. Dodsworth is left to fend for himself, and returns home, where he longs for his wayward spouse. Returning to Europe, he finds little changed and they agree to divorce. After fumbling around the contintent, Dodsworth finds a woman to love, but then his wife is dumped by her latest paramour and Dodsworh is faced with the choice of returning to his mate of 20 plus years, or setting out on a new course. You can feel his pain in coming to his decision. This book is a terrific discourse on the Ugly American as well as the phony European royalty. Both sides are equally distasteful, but interesting none-the-less. The only reason I didn't give this book five stars is that Lewis seems to rush the ending. The resolution comes too quickly compared to the pace of the rest of the book. It's like the author thought, "Well, I've got almost 400 pages, so let's wrap it up." By the way, there is a very good movie made of the book featuring Walter Houston. It's available on video and very faithful to the book.

It takes more than money to put you on "Easy Street".......2000-01-29

Dodsworth is a 1920s industrialist who sells his car company for a fortune. Suddenly, in healthy middle age, he and his wife have nothing to do. They go to Europe and acquire culture.

The Dodsworths are intelligent, gentle people, not to be confused with the "Babbitt" stereotype of Lewis's own making. As such, DODSWORTH the novel becomes a kind of philosophical musing on Old Europe vs. Young America, art versus industry, craftsmanship versus mass production, and so on.

The argument is out of date, of course, but today's reader might hear echoes of DODSWORTH in today's more affluent retirees. I'm thinking of the folks who make enough to retire to Florida or Arizona while still in their fifties but haven't yet learned to "do" much more than drink and party. Wonder what Lewis would think of them?

The casual reader probably wouldn't want to pick up DODSWORTH until s/he has been thru BABBITT, MAIN STREET, and ARROWSMITH.

Average customer rating:

The best critique since sliced bread

Sir Walter Ralegh: The Poems, Eith Other Verse from the Court of Elizabeth I (Everyman's Poetry)

Manufacturer: Tuttle Publishing
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Poetry | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books
British & Irish | Single Authors | Poetry | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books
ASIN: 0460879944

Customer Reviews:

The best critique since sliced bread.......2000-05-18

Who would have thought that such an unassuming book could have come to be so supremely valuable. although at points the style is a little subversive i found the book to be on the whole insightful and well constructed. For those who have not recently bought a book of this genre i reccommend it heartly.

Dodsworth;: A novel; (The modern library of the world's best books)

Average customer rating:

Dodsworth;: A novel; (The modern library of the world's best books)
Sinclair Lewis
Manufacturer: Modern Library
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Unknown Binding
Similar Items:

Dodsworth

ASIN: B0006ARFIO

Average customer rating:

Dodsworth
Sinclair Lewis
Manufacturer: Signet Classics
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Contemporary | General | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

The Anatomy of Melancholy: Volume IV: Commentary up to Part 1, Section 2, Member 3, Subsection 15, "Misery of Schollers" (Oxford English Texts)

Average customer rating:

The Anatomy of Melancholy: Volume IV: Commentary up to Part 1, Section 2, Member 3, Subsection 15, "Misery of Schollers" (Oxford English Texts)
Robert Burton
Manufacturer: Oxford University Press, USA
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

Classics | General | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

Clinical Psychology | Psychology & Counseling | Health, Mind & Body | Subjects | Books

Mental Illness | Psychology & Counseling | Health, Mind & Body | Subjects | Books

All Titles | Qualifying Textbooks - Fall 2007 | Stores | Books
ASIN: 0198123329

Book Description

This is the fourth volume of the Clarendon edition of Robert Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy and the first of three volumes of Commentary. It contains commentary on the text up to p. 327 of volume one - i.e. The Argument of the Frontispeice, Democritus to the Reader, and Partition 1 as far as the end of Section 2, Member 3, Subsection 15: 'Misery of Schollers'. In his study of morbid psychology as it was understood in his day, Burton cites many other writers. No previous edition of the Anatomy has identified all of these or verified all his quotations. In addition to explanatory notes and translations of all the passages in Latin, this edition attempts to locate all Burton's sources in the actual books he himself owned or to which he probably had access. The last of the three volumes of commentary will contain a Biobibliography listing over 1,500 authorities referred to by Burton, many very obscure, and will give not only bibliographical details but information about the writers.

The Anatomy of Melancholy: Volume V: Commentary from Part.1, Sect.2, Memb.4, Subs.1 to the End of the Second Partition (Anatomy of Melancholy)

Average customer rating:

The Anatomy of Melancholy: Volume V: Commentary from Part.1, Sect.2, Memb.4, Subs.1 to the End of the Second Partition (Anatomy of Melancholy)
Robert Burton
Manufacturer: Oxford University Press, USA
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

Classics | General | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

Mental Illness | Psychology & Counseling | Health, Mind & Body | Subjects | Books

History of Ideas | Historical Study | History | Subjects | Books

General | Performing Arts | Arts & Photography | Subjects | Books

All Titles | Qualifying Textbooks - Fall 2007 | Stores | Books
ASIN: 0198184859

Book Description

This, the fifth volume of the Clarendon Press edition of Robert Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy, contains commentary on the text from Partition 1, Section 2, Member 4, Subsection 1 until the end of Part. 1, and on the whole of the second Partition. It thus concludes Burton's account of the causes, the symptoms, and the prognosis of melancholy, and his examination of the remedies for the disease both spiritual and medical. As before, the aim of the commentary is to aid the reader to understand Burton's meaning (to which end all the passages in Latin are translated) and to identify the sources of his many quotations from and references to other authors. The third and last volume of the commentary, and of the edition, will contains a full Bibliography of these authors and brief biographical notes on them.

The Anatomy of Melancholy: Volume VI: Commentary on the Third Partition, together with Biobibliographical and Topical Indexes (Anatomy of Melancholy)

Average customer rating:

"My subject is of man and humankind."

The Anatomy of Melancholy: Volume VI: Commentary on the Third Partition, together with Biobibliographical and Topical Indexes (Anatomy of Melancholy)
Robert Burton , and Martin Dodsworth
Manufacturer: Oxford University Press, USA
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

Greece | Ancient | History | Subjects | Books

Wales | Europe | History | Subjects | Books

General | World | History | Subjects | Books

History of Ideas | Historical Study | History | Subjects | Books

Mental Illness | Psychology & Counseling | Health, Mind & Body | Subjects | Books

All Titles | Qualifying Textbooks - Fall 2007 | Stores | Books
ASIN: 0198184867

Book Description

This, the final volume of the Clarendon Press edition of Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy, contains commentary on the Third Partition, in which Burton considers two especial forms of the disease, Love and Religious Melancholy. In treating of these Burton had fewer precedents to follow than in previous sections, but he was able to draw largely on his extensive knowledge of classical literature and also on his acquaintance with English drama and poetry (including popular verse). As ever his range of reference to other authors is wide, and the volume includes an index which gives biographical and bibliographical information concerning the more than 1550 authorities cited in the Anatomy, most of whom are little known today. Also included are an index of the major topics discussed in the Anatomy, and a complete bibliography of all the works mentioned in the commentary.

Customer Reviews:

"My subject is of man and humankind.".......2001-06-28

Don't be misled by the title of this book, nor by what others may have told you about it. In the first place, it isn't so much a book about 'Melancholy' (or abnormal psychology, or depression, or whatever) as a book about Burton himself and, ultimately, about humankind. Secondly, it isn't so much a book for students of the history of English prose, as one for lovers of language who joy in the strong taste of English when it was at its most masculine and vigorous. Finally, it isn't so much a book for those interested in the renaissance, as for those interested in life.

Burton is not a writer for fops and milquetoasts. He was a crusty old devil who used to go down to the river to listen to the bargemen cursing so that he could keep in touch with the true tongue of his race. Sometimes I think he might have been better off as the swashbuckling Captain of a pirate ship. But somehow he ended up as a scholar, and instead of watching the ocean satisfyingly swallowing up his victims, he himself became an ocean of learning swallowing up whole libraries. His book, in consequence, although it may have begun as a mere 'medical treatise,' soon exploded beyond its bounds to become, in the words of one of his editors, "a grand literary entertainment, as well as a rich mine of miscellaneous learning."

Of his own book he has this to say : "... a rhapsody of rags gathered together from several dung-hills, excrements of authors, toys and fopperies confusedly tumbled out, without art, invention, judgement, wit, learning, harsh, raw, rude, phantastical, absurd, insolent, indiscreet, ill-composed, indigested, vain, scurrile, idle, dull, and dry; I confess all..." But don't believe him, he's in one of his irascible moods and exaggerating. In fact it's a marvelous book.

Here's a bit more of the crusty Burton I love; it's on his fellow scholars : "Heretofore learning was graced by judicious scholars, but now noble sciences are vilified by base and illiterate scribblers."

And here is Burton warming to the subject of contemporary theologians : "Theologasters, if they can but pay ... proceed to the very highest degrees. Hence it comes that such a pack of vile buffoons, ignoramuses wandering in the twilight of learning, ghosts of clergymen, itinerant quacks, dolts, clods, asses, mere cattle, intrude with unwashed feet upon the sacred precincts of Theology, bringing with them nothing save brazen impudence, and some hackneyed quillets and scholastic trifles not good enough for a crowd at a street corner."

Finally a passage I can't resist quoting which shows something of Burton's prose at its best, though I leave you to guess the subject: "... with this tempest of contention the serenity of charity is overclouded, and there be too many spirits conjured up already in this kind in all sciences, and more than we can tell how to lay, which do so furiously rage, and keep such a racket, that as Fabius said, "It had been much better for some of them to have been born dumb, and altogether illiterate, than so far to dote to their own destruction."

To fully appreciate these quotations you would have to see them in context, and I'm conscious of having touched on only one of his many moods and aspects. But a taste for Burton isn't difficult to acquire. He's a mine of curious learning. When in full stride he can be very funny, and it's easy to share his feelings as he often seems to be describing, not so much his own world as today's.

But he does demand stamina. His prose overwhelms and washes over us like a huge tsunami, and for that reason he's probably best taken in small doses. If you are unfamiliar with his work and were to approach him with that in mind, you might find that (as is the case with Montaigne, a very different writer) you had discovered not so much a book as a companion for life.

Average customer rating:
The Arca Di San Domenico (Intercultural Studies, Vol 2)
Barbara W. Dodsworth
Manufacturer: Peter Lang Publishing
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

Gothic | Schools, Periods & Styles | Arts & Photography | Subjects | Books
General | Sculpture | Arts & Photography | Subjects | Books
General | Reference | Subjects | Books
All Titles | Qualifying Textbooks - Fall 2007 | Stores | Books
ASIN: 0820424528

Books:

Books Index

Books Home

Recommended Books