The Nature of Melancholy: From Aristotle to Kristeva [Hardcover]

Jennifer Radden (Editor)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 28, 2000

Spanning 24 centuries, this anthology collects over thirty selections of important Western writing about melancholy and its related conditions by philosophers, doctors, religious and literary figures, and modern psychologists. Truly interdisciplinary, it is the first such anthology. As it traces Western attitudes, it reveals a conversation across centuries and continents as the authors interpret, respond, and build on each other's work. Editor Jennifer Radden provides an extensive, in-depth introduction that draws links and parallels between the selections, and reveals the ambiguous relationship between these historical accounts of melancholy and today's psychiatric views on depression. This important new collection is also beautifully illustrated with depictions of melancholy from Western fine art.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

Radden (philosophy, Univ. of Massachusetts, Boston) presents a compelling and accessible history of the identifying and describing Western thinkers have applied to the titular emotional disposition. Each brief chapter situates the chronologically arranged theorist's ideas on melancholy within the larger frame of his or her philosophical, theological, or medical writings and then offers excerpts to demonstrate Radden's theory that, from Aristotle until Freud, melancholy's analysis underwent an accretion process as its place in culture and its role in behavior were examined. After Freud, Radden posits, melancholy lost its organizing status and became a minor category subsumed into the larger realm of developmental psychology. Radden allows readers to consider the theories of Galen, Avicenna, Hildegard of Bingen, Teresa of Avila, Cotton Mather, Goethe, Keats, Baudelaire, and Melanie Klein along the way. This unique history will well serve students, general readers, patients, and caregivers.DFrancisca Goldsmith, Berkeley P.L., CA
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review

"Melancholy's simultaneous links with creative energy and with idleness.The Nature of Melancholy is to be commended for its attempt to bring wide and generous frames of reference to bear upon a subject that holds interest for many readers. Its immense chronological sweep invites scholars.-- Bryn Mawr Review of Comparative Literature

"Lyrical language abounds in [this] compendium of historic and contemporary writings....Hildegard of Bingen conjectures that melancholy descends genetically from Adam, while, more recently, the post-Freudian linguist Julia Kristeva offers a modern theory that suggests an updated version of black bile."--The New Yorker

"Radden's invaluable anthology...scrupulously presents the key texts.... The Nature of Melancholy does an excellent job of tracing the history of efforts to find a language capable of sheltering humanity from that storm [in the mind]."--Times Literary Supplement

"With skill, Radden brings together in a single volume a marvelous collection of essays, excerpts, and writings on what is now usually called 'depression'. [Melancholy] will likely remain central to the human condition, and this book may be the best medicine for it....Radden has written a penetrating and lengthy introduction....Handsome illustrations complement this serious yet inviting work of scholarship."--Virgina Quarterly Review

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 392 pages
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA (September 28, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0195129628
• ISBN-13: 978-0195129625
• Product Dimensions: 9.6 x 6.4 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,932,972 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A fine anthology, September 5, 2006

By 

Ejames LIEBERMAN (Potomac, Maryland United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Nature of Melancholy: From Aristotle to Kristeva (Hardcover)

Philosopher Radden culls the works of 32 authors, preceded by an excellent 50-page introduction to the topic, once a commonplace idea, now "an insignificant category, of little interest to medicine or pscyhology..." The pleasure in learning from this valuable work is a modicum of joy in the midst of sorrow.
My full review appeared in The Bulletin of the History of Medicine, 2002.

0 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Lousy print job!, December 31, 2009

By 

Lost in Siberia (a small island in the Arctic Ocean) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: The Nature of Melancholy: From Aristotle to Kristeva (Paperback)

I've just begun reading the book, and the writing itself seems excellent. But the print job is terrible. Looks like a bad photocopy: the letters are not sharp, and many of the illustrations look like they've been soaked in mud; for example, the print of Dürer's "Melencolia I" is so dark not a single number of the "magic square" can be read. Maybe the printers thought a dark, blotchy, blottered look appropriate for a book on melancholy.