Neglected Canon From 'Dracula' to Ovid

[Chris Abraham]

I got!

Chris

robinlandseadel at comcast.net wrote:
> 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
>   

-- 
Chris Abraham
cja at well.com
cabraham.com