The Tangled Chain

The Tangled Chain: The Structure of Disorder in the Anatomy of Melancholy by Ruth A. Fox offers a formalist reading of Robert Burton’s monumental work, concentrating on the problems of structure and theme that shape the Anatomy of Melancholy. Rather than surveying its broader place among medical treatises, psychological writings, or Elizabethan anatomies, Fox focuses closely on the ways in which Burton organizes, fragments, and ultimately stabilizes his sprawling text. Her approach, attentive to partitions, subsections, and the author’s methods of citation and interpolation, reveals the deliberate yet paradoxical logic that governs Burton’s treatment of disorder. By restricting her scope, Fox is able to excavate the tensions in the *Anatomy* itself—between encyclopedic ambition and structural chaos, between scholarly compilation and creative design—that continue to puzzle readers.

Fox’s study situates itself as complementary to contextual works by Lawrence Babb and Bridget Gellert Lyons while carving out a distinctive analytical position. Drawing on her own close readings, aided by the Everyman edition of Holbrook Jackson, she emphasizes the textual mechanics of Burton’s book: the layering of Latin, the handling of translations, and the editorial traditions that mediate modern access. The project’s rigor is underscored by Fox’s careful citation practices and by her attention to Burton’s Latin, whether preserved, paraphrased, or omitted. The Tangled Chain thus provides scholars of Renaissance literature and intellectual history with a sustained inquiry into how Burton’s famously digressive text fashions coherence out of disorder, illuminating both the Anatomy’s literary artistry and its enduring interpretive challenges.

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1976.