ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on Robert Burton's use of genre and persona, arguing that Burton's theatrical insistence upon his own anonymity stages a defense of melancholy that valorizes care as the root of compassionate feeling. It focuses on the removal of his signature from the second and all subsequent editions of the Anatomy's conclusion, but his theatrical insistence upon keeping his identity secret and presenting the book as the work of one 'Democritus Junior'. The chapter suggests that Burton's adoption of his Democritean mask sets the stage for a profound critique of Stoic apatheia. It argues that Burton's purported stylistic carelessness sets up the problem of care and its absence, real, feigned, and misinterpreted, as the peremptory matter of the Anatomy's investigation. The chapter discusses the pretense of accident in Burton's use of the cento, considering his errant citations as further techniques of both self-concealment and tactical disclosure.
