Abstract
In His Preface ToThe Anatomy Of Melancholy, Robert Burton dwells in characteristically fine detail on the international reputation of his home country. He emphasises its positives – the ‘fair’ cities, the ports, the laws – and admits that it lacks good rivers and prosperous towns. The primary English failing, according to Burton, is idleness – a fault it would be difficult to find in the writer himself. Burton follows this evaluation with a long, satirical reflection on a literary form that was well known, as Chloë Houston points out at the opening of The Renaissance Utopia, for ‘imagining practical social reform’ (p. 4). He writes: I will yet to satisfie & please my selfe, make an Utopia of mine owne, a new Atlantis, a poeticall commonwealth of mine owne, in which I will freely domineere, build Citties, make Lawes, Statutes, as I list my selfe. And why may I not? (Pictoribus atque Poëtis, &c.)1
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