This paper explores multiple aspects of seventeenth-century English author Robert Burton’s view of idleness as expressed and implied in The Anatomy of Melancholy. An analysis of Burton’s references to this notion in the text finds that he views idleness almost exclusively as the predominant cause of melancholy. An examination of religious and social contexts reveals that his highly critical view of idleness can be attributed to the combination of the Christian moral concept of acedia with an array of political and social factors specific to late Elizabethan and early Jacobean England. These include English authorities’ declaration of idleness as a crime punishable by execution in response to the apprentice riots of the 1590s and the perceived laziness of Englishmen, which Burton blames for the country’s relative weakness. Furthermore, although a correlation between idleness and the Latin concept of otium is widely assumed in the study of English literature, the text of the Anatomy suggests that while Burton was fully aware of the implications of otium, he drew a clear distinction between idleness and leisure by assigning the former to refer to a cause of melancholy and the latter to a beneficial aspect of otium.
内容記述
言語態
雑誌名
言語情報科学 = Language and information sciences
巻
17
ページ
87 - 102
発行年
2019-03-01
ISSN
13478931
書誌レコードID
AA11831019
著者版フラグ
publisher
出版者
東京大学大学院総合文化研究科言語情報科学専攻
出版者別名
Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, the University of Tokyo
Robert Burton and Idleness in The Anatomy of Melancholy
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