Religio Medici And Urne-Buriall

(Paperback, Main)

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"The iniquity of oblivion blindly scatters her poppyseed and when wretchedness falls upon us one summer's day like snow, all we wish for is to be forgotten. These are the circles Browne's thought's describe." -W.G. Sebald, author of The Rings of Saturn Sir Thomas Browne is one of the supreme stylists of the English language: a coiner of words and spinner of phrases of a near Shakespearean fecundity; the wielder of a weird and wonderful erudition; an inquiring spirit in the mold of Montaigne. Browne was an inspiration to Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Thomas De Quincy, as well as to W.G. Sebald, and his unique voice is both quirky and sonorous, an echo chamber that is full of enchantment. This new edition of Browne's two most enduring and beloved works, Religio Medici, in which he weighs and ponders the relation between his medical profession and his profession of the Christian faith, and Urne-Buriall, an exquisite meditation on mortality, has been put together by the distinguished Renaissance Scholar and bestselling author of Will in the World, Stephen Greenblatt, and Ramie Targoff. It includes an extensive introduction and annotations that will help readers find their way into the extraordinary world of Sir Thomas Browne.

Reviews

'a welcome complement to these scholarly projects. The text preserves original spelling and notes; a finely wrought, judicious introduction describes Browne's wide-ranging curiosity, his influences, his self-fascination, his faith and doubts. A pocket edition of Browne is good to have not least because his aphoristic style rewards casual reading. Open it at any page and find a surprise.' London Review of Books 'Thomas Browne's Religio Medici is one of the most significant literary achievements of the 17th century yet hardly anyone bothers to read it. This edition should change all that.' The Glasgow Herald 'Greenblatt and Targoff reveal the humanity, and even the familiarity, behind Browne's work' Times Literary Supplement 'A thing of delightful rarity and strangeness' Irish Times 'hypnotic prose...like having an audience with Hamlet' The Independent

Author Bio

SIR THOMAS BROWNE (1605-1682) was an English Renaissance author and physician. He wrote about medicine, geography, philosophy, and Christian spirituality. STEPHEN GREENBLATT is Cogan University Professor of English and American Literature and Language at Harvard University. He lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and in Vermont. RAMIE TARGOFF is professor of English at Brandeis University. She is the author of Common Prayer and John Donne, Body and Soul.