Neglected Canon From 'Dracula' to Ovid

[robinlandseadel at comcast.net]

Great post [re-post?] from Mr. Monroe. I was reading 'The Anatomy of Melancholy' 
http://tinyurl.com/2lfc7s  just a bit before addling my brain With Gravity's 
Rainbow. Robert Burton's work is a classic of tangential misdirection, and 
contains some of the best collections of long lists of very strange things 
[vide: Against the Day] you will find anywhere. It is also very, very funny. 
Doubtless the language, learning and twisted point of view of this remarkable 
tome guided our beloved author through some of the flightier discursive 
passages in 'Mason & Dixon'. Certainly, Dr. Burton's psychological profiling 
by the 'humors' plays a key role in the characters of Jeremiah and Charles.  

               The Author's Abstract of Melancholy:

               WHEN I go musing all alone, 
               Thinking of divers things foreknown, 
               When I build castles in the ayr, 
               Void of sorrow and void of feare, 
               Pleasing myself with phantasms sweet
               All my joyes to this are folly, — 
               Naught so sweet as melancholy. 
               When I lie waking all alone, 
               Recounting what I have ill done, 
               My thoughts on me then tyrannize, 
               Feare and sorrow me surprise, 
               Whether I tarry still or go, 
               Methinks the time moves very slow. sweet, 
               Methinks the time runs very fleet. 
               All my griefs to this are jolly,  
               Naught so sad as melancholy. . . . 

I'd throw Ben Jonson's 'Bartholomew Faire' http://tinyurl.com/32cujj 
into Dirda's list as well, another neglected classic informed throughout 
by preterite science. This online version is superior to modern versions
in that the original spellings are preserved. Much of the dialog in this 
play is written out phonetically, much like 'Huckleberry Finn'. 
http://tinyurl.com/27h4ad. 

And if you really want to know Melancholy, 
you must listen to the music of John Dowland: 

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-4689934254359282625

http://www.hoasm.org/IVM/Dowland.html

http://www.naxos.com/catalogue/item.asp?item_code=8.557862

 
     WSJ.com: If there were only three books in this volume that you 
     would urge Journal readers to try, what would they be and why? 

      Mr. Dirda: I would pick Robert Burton's "The Anatomy of Melancholy" 
     and Edward Gibbon's "History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman 
     Empire." Both are big fat books that you could read for a long time. 
     Burton is full of odd bits of learning and lore, and Gibbon has a 
     delicious style full of irony and low key wit. For the third one, 
     probably I'd take the ghost stories of M.R. James. He is to ghost 
     stories what Sherlock Holmes is to detective stories.
 
 http://online.wsj.com/article/SB119635938818108226.html