THE CITY AND ITS THERAPEUTIC DIMENSION IN ROBERT BURTON’S THE ANATOMY OF MELANCHOLY
THE CITY AND ITS THERAPEUTIC DIMENSION IN ROBERT BURTON’S THE ANATOMY OF MELANCHOLY

Summary/Abstract: My concern in this paper is the inclusion of the city among early modernprescriptions for attaining mental, bodily and moral health that takes place inRobert 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 therapeuticspace that is addressed to several psycho-somatic disorders – among whichmelancholy occupies a privileged place – and is able to counter the deleteriouseffects of ‘natural’ air through ‘artificial’ means; and secondly, I would like to shedlight upon the manner in which this particular remedy combines severalphilosophical and medical approaches to the relationship between self andenvironment and brings together their respective therapeutic strategies. What Iwould like to draw attention to is the fact that the recommendation to reside in orvisit particular cities is based, on the one hand, on the Hippocratic-Galenicapproach to healing the mind and body by acting on the latter’s material qualitiesvia the six non-naturals and, on the other, on Stoic techniques of training theimagination to select and contemplate those external objects that trigger adequatepassions and build virtue. I would thus like to emphasize the intricacies of thesyncretism which the question of the city as remedy produces and, as such, to arguefor the particularity of this cure.

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