"Malinconici alle terme. Sui fantasmi e i mosaici dell’Anatomy of Melancholy di Robert Burton"

In this paper I aim to investigate the theme of corrupted imagination in Robert Burton’s Anatomy of Melancholy, translating it from a medical perspective to an aesthetical one. To this end, I decided to start from a very specific site, i.e. thermal baths, from which I trace an exegetical path that first of all isolates hypochondriacal melancholy – i.e. the physiological cause that such a treatment was meant to cure – as a disease connected to the intellectual faculties. After such preliminary medical observations, my discourse tackles the traditional association between the poet and the melancholy man.