A Brief History of Melancholy
Melancholy has a long and fascinating history
According to Oxford Languages, Google’s English dictionary, melancholy, or melancholia, is “a feeling of pensive sadness, typically with no obvious cause.” Although today it’s commonly used as a synonym for depression or deep sadness, the term melancholy has a long, fascinating history and a complex denotation. In particular, as the above definition suggests, it’s been historically associated with contemplation and self-reflection.
Throughout the centuries, scholars interwove the link between melancholy and intellectual insight with the dominant medical theories, ways of thinking, and social organization of their time. Thus, the concept of melancholy slowly became a multilayered cultural and artistic phenomenon.
1. “Melaina Kholé.” Melancholy in Ancient History
In Ancient Greece, the word for melancholy was melancholia, meaning “black bile” (from melas, “dark,” and kohlé, “bile”). This term derived from the dominant medical doctrine at the time: the Humoral Theory, or Humoralism. According to this scientific belief, the human body was composed of four humors or bodily fluids: blood, phlegm, yellow bile, and black bile. Each humor was responsible for one of the four main temperaments: sanguine, phlegmatic…
