melancholy


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melancholy

Archaic
a. a gloomy character, thought to be caused by too much black bile
b. one of the four bodily humours; black bile
Collins Discovery Encyclopedia, 1st edition © HarperCollins Publishers 2005

Melancholy

See also Grief.
Acheron
river of woe in the underworld. [Gk. Myth.: Howe, 5]
Anatomy of Melancholy
lists causes, symptoms, and characteristics of melancholy. [Br. Lit.: Anatomy of Melancholy]
Barton, Amos
beset by woes. [Br. Lit.: “Sad Fortunes of Amos Barton” in Walsh Modern, 45]
black bile
humor effecting temperament of gloominess. [Medieval Physiology: Hall, 130]
blues
melancholy, bittersweet music born among American Negroes. [Am. Music: Scholes, 113]
Cargill, Rev. Josiah
serious, moody, melancholic minister. [Br. Lit.: St. Ronan’s Well]
Carstone, Richard
driven to gloom by collapse of expectations. [Br. Lit.: Bleak House]
cave of Trophonius
oracle so awe-inspiring, consulters never smiled again. [Gk. Myth.: Brewer Dictionary, 1103]
Eeyore
amusingly gloomy, morose donkey. [Children’s Lit.: Winnie-the-Pooh]
Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard
meditative poem of a melancholy mood. [Br. Lit.: Harvey, 266]
Ellis Island
immigration center where many families were separated; “isle of tears.” [Am. Hist.: Flexner, 193]
Gummidge, Mrs.
“lone lorn creetur” with melancholy disposition. [Br. Lit.: David Copperfield]
Hamlet
black mood dominates his consciousness. [Brit. Lit.: Shakespeare Hamlet]
hare
flesh brings melancholy to those who eat it. [Animal Symbolism: Mercatante, 125]
Il Penseroso
poem celebrating the pleasures of melancholy and solitude. [Br. Lit.: Milton Il Penseroso in Magill IV, 577]
Jaques
“can suck melancholy out of a song.” [Br. Lit.: As You Like It]
Mock Turtle
forever weeping and bemoaning his fate. [Br. Lit.: Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland]
Mudville
no joy here when Casey struck out. [Am. Sports Lit.: “Casey at the Bat” in Turlin, 642]
Orpheus
composed, sang many melancholic songs in memory of deceased Eurydice. [Gk. Myth.: Orpheus and Eurydice, Magill I, 700–701]
Roquentin, Antoine
discomfited by his existence’s purposelessness, solitarily despairs. [Fr. Lit.: Nausea]
Sad Sack
hapless and helpless soldier; resigned to his fate. [Comics: Horn, 595–596]
Valley of the Shadow of Death
life’s gloominess. [O.T.: Psalms 23:4]
Wednesday’s
child full of woe. [Nurs. Rhyme: Opie, 309]
yew
tree symbolizes grief. [Flower Symbolism: Flora Symbolica, 178]
Allusions—Cultural, Literary, Biblical, and Historical: A Thematic Dictionary. Copyright 2008 The Gale Group, Inc. All rights reserved.
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Talking of poor Tom and Maggie Tulliver brings to my mind a saying of George Eliot's in connection with this subject of melancholy. She speaks somewhere of the "sadness of a summer's evening." How wonderfully true--like everything that came from that wonderful pen--the observation is!
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"You have brought tears into eyes that never should weep," cried Delafield, "and melancholy to a countenance that seems formed by nature to convey an idea of peaceful content."
Maria made no reply, but turned her eyes on Delafield, with an affected expression of melancholy that excited another laugh in her friend.
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It made her melancholy again; and the knowledge of what must be enduring there, invested even the house, modern, airy, and well situated as it was, with a melancholy aspect.
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Bread had ever consciously likened herself to a planet), barely availed to temper the maternal melancholy with which she leaned her head on one side and gazed at her new employer.
He might be melancholy if he would, or he might be stoical; he might be cross and cantankerous with her and ask her why she had ever dared to meddle with his destiny: to this she would submit; for this she would make allowances.
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Then arose a slim, melancholy girl, whose face had the "interesting" paleness that comes of pills and indi- gestion, and read a "poem." Two stanzas of it will do:
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"Ah!" said Sancho weeping, "don't die, master, but take my advice and live many years; for the foolishest thing a man can do in this life is to let himself die without rhyme or reason, without anybody killing him, or any hands but melancholy's making an end of him.
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Of the 59 terms to be found in the volume, enthusiasm, genius, imagination, judgment, melancholy, sensibility, spleen will interest a psychiatrist, with enthusiasm, melancholy and spleen coming first.
Robert DeMaria, Jr., British Literature 1640-1789
Bark; Shaw) and what would have been known in Shakespeare's time as melancholy (see e.g.
Shakespeare's Henry VI and Depression
Mark Stevens; THE MELANCHOLY HOWL; Third Line Press (Fiction: Mystery) 16.95 ISBN: 9780990722472
The Melancholy Howl
The Melancholy Assemblage: Affect and Epistemology in the English Renaissance
The Melancholy Assemblage: Affect and Epistemology in the English Renaissance

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