- Title Pages
- Dedication
- Preface
- Introduction
- 1 Brilliance and Melancholy
- 2 Diseases of the Black Bile
- 3 Accidie
- 4 Black Bile and Melancholia
- 5 Melancholia in Men and Women
- 6 Learned People and Melancholy
- 7 Melancholia, Witches, and Deceiving Demons
- 8 Melancholy Nuns
- 9 Melancholy
- 10 Melancholic States
- 11 The Melancholy Character
- 12 How to Help Melancholicks
- 13 The Spleen
- 14 The Chronic Disease of Melancholy
- 15 Werther’s Death
- 16 Illnesses of the Cognitive Faculties
- 17 Melancholia
- 18 Hypochondriasis or Tristimania
- 19 “Ode on Melancholy” and ”What the Thrush Said”
- 20 Hypochondriasis and Melancholia
- 21 “Autumn Song” and “Spleen”
- 22 Green Sickness and Wertherism
- 23 Affectivity in Mental Disorder
- 24 Depressive States
- 25 Loss
- 26 The Depressive Position
- 27 A Learned Helplessness Model of Depression
- 28 A Cognitivist Analysis of Depression
- 29 Affiliation, Cultural Roles, and Women's Depression
- 30 Mourning the Lost Mother and the Lost Self
- 31 Biomedical Analyses of Depression
- Bibliography
- Credits
- Index
The Melancholy Character
The Melancholy Character
Butler
- Chapter:
- (p.157) 11 The Melancholy Character
- Source:
- The Nature of Melancholy
- Author(s):
Jennifer Radden
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
This chapter presents Samuel Butler's discussion of melancholy. The work Characters, from which the following sketch of the melancholy man is taken, was written between 1667 and 1669. Butler's volume of characters contains almost 200 different human types he observed in the society about him in Restoration England. As well as the melancholy man, he sketched the Bumpkin or Country Squire, the Hypocritical Man, the Huffing Courtier, the Catholic, the Curious Man, the Proud Man, and the Hypocritical Nonconformist. In this text, melancholy is portrayed both as a normal variation of human personality and as a pathological condition, and no tension seems to attach to this seeming contradiction. In keeping with the tradition of characters, Butler's melancholy man is at times no more than a dispositional type. On the other hand, the melancholy man is said to see visions and hear voices, and he seems incapable of distinguishing accurate from inaccurate perceptual experience.
Keywords: Samuel Butler, melancholy, melancholia, Characters, Restoration England
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- Title Pages
- Dedication
- Preface
- Introduction
- 1 Brilliance and Melancholy
- 2 Diseases of the Black Bile
- 3 Accidie
- 4 Black Bile and Melancholia
- 5 Melancholia in Men and Women
- 6 Learned People and Melancholy
- 7 Melancholia, Witches, and Deceiving Demons
- 8 Melancholy Nuns
- 9 Melancholy
- 10 Melancholic States
- 11 The Melancholy Character
- 12 How to Help Melancholicks
- 13 The Spleen
- 14 The Chronic Disease of Melancholy
- 15 Werther’s Death
- 16 Illnesses of the Cognitive Faculties
- 17 Melancholia
- 18 Hypochondriasis or Tristimania
- 19 “Ode on Melancholy” and ”What the Thrush Said”
- 20 Hypochondriasis and Melancholia
- 21 “Autumn Song” and “Spleen”
- 22 Green Sickness and Wertherism
- 23 Affectivity in Mental Disorder
- 24 Depressive States
- 25 Loss
- 26 The Depressive Position
- 27 A Learned Helplessness Model of Depression
- 28 A Cognitivist Analysis of Depression
- 29 Affiliation, Cultural Roles, and Women's Depression
- 30 Mourning the Lost Mother and the Lost Self
- 31 Biomedical Analyses of Depression
- Bibliography
- Credits
- Index
