Saturn and Melancholy

Philippe Despoix is professor of comparative literature at Université de Montréal and co-editor of Raymond Klibansky and the Warburg Library Network: Intellectual Peregrinations from Hamburg to London and Montreal. Georges Leroux is emeritus professor in the Department of Philosophy at Université du Québec à Montréal, co-editor of Raymond Klibansky and the Warburg Library Network: Intellectual Peregrinations from Hamburg to London and Montreal, and author of Partita for Glenn Gould: An Inquiry into the Nature of Genius.

"The majestic Saturn and Melancholy represents a unique interdisciplinary collaboration among three leading humanists of the twentieth century. One of the most venerable and momentous books ever written in the field of Renaissance studies, this new edition is a cause for celebration by scholars and interested readers alike." Laurinda Dixon, Syracuse University "The reissue of Saturn and Melancholy is a major event that scholars worldwide have long been waiting for: almost as great an achievement as its original publication." Davide Stimilli, University of Colorado Boulder "I do not believe that the Warburgian spirit has ever been better illustrated." Robert Klein, Mercure de France "This classic of collaborative scholarship, long out of print, has been reissued with supplementary materials, including updated bibliographies and translations of its Latin quotations. More than six hundred pages in its newest version, a trove of cosmological, physiological, and psychological learning and lore, the book comes to us as a precious gift because it reflects on a question seldom posed today: not that of art's destination - its uses and purposes - but rather of art's origin." Artforum "With epigrammatic fervor, T.S. Eliot once defined a "living tradition" as "the good New growing naturally out of the good Old." Noble as the sentiment is, one of the most important lessons to have emerged from the Warburg Institute's work over the years is the degree to which the amorphous mass of ideas and sentiments that we call a "tradition" are dependent on the physical transmission of texts. There is no cultural tradition without copies, reprints, ultimately, the availability of sources. We now have this first-rate new edition to thank for the promise that work of this kind may continue into the future, under the sign of Saturn." Los Angeles Review of Books "Saturn and Melancholy contains such a wealth of accumulated scholarship, over multiple fields, covering the whole of the Western intellectual tradition, that it would be better to describe this publication as an archival event, an encyclopedia, or even an ad hoc attempt at library construction … Saturn and Melancholy is a beautiful book with its many illustrations and appurtenances. One can only imagine the editorial and typesetting efforts that went into its production." Science et Esprit