Abstract
Thomas Browne, physician, philosophical prose writer, and natural philosopher of profound and unique literary power, was highly influential in seventeenth-century England and in the European Republic of Letters. His works blend scientific and theological insights to meditate on the nature of religious belief, the empirical pursuit of truth and the banishment of error, the frailty of human enterprise, and the marvelous richness of the natural world. His writings, persistently influential in the Western tradition, have inspired writers as diverse as Coleridge, Melville, Thoreau, Woolf, and Borges.
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References
Primary Literature
Browne, T. 1643. Religio Medici.
Browne, T. 1646–1672. Pseudodoxia Epidemica.
Browne, T. 1656. A letter to a friend.
Browne, T. 1658. Hydriotaphia or Urne-Buriall and The Garden of Cyrus.
Browne, T. 1684. Miscellany tracts.
Browne, T. 1964a. Religio Medici and other works, ed. L.C. Martin. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Browne, T. 1964b. The works of Sir Thomas Browne, 4 vols, revised edition. ed. Geoffrey Keynes. Chicago:University of Chicago Press.
Browne, T. 1981. In Pseudodoxia Epidemica, ed. Robin Robbins. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Secondary Literature
Barbour, R. 2013. Sir Thomas Browne: A life. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Barbour, R., and C. Preston (eds.). 2008. Sir Thomas Browne: The world proposed. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Huntley, F.L. 1968. Sir Thomas Browne: A biographical and critical study. Ann Arbor: Paperbacks.
Johnson, S. 1756. ‘Sir Thomas Browne’ in lives of the poets.
Murphy, K., and R. Todd (eds.). 2008. A man very well studyed: Contexts for Sir Thomas Browne. Leiden: Brill.
Nathanson, L. 1967. The strategy of truth: A study of Sir Thomas Browne. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Patrides, C.A. (ed.). 1982. Approaches to Sir Thomas Browne: The Ann Arbor tercentenary lectures and essays. Columbus: University of Missouri Press.
Post, J.F.S. 1987. Sir Thomas Browne. Boston: Twayne Publishers.
Preston, C. 2005. Thomas Browne and the writing of early-modern science. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
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Preston, C. (2020). Browne, Sir Thomas. In: Sgarbi, M. (eds) Encyclopedia of Renaissance Philosophy. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-02848-4_417-2
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Browne, Sir Thomas- Published:
- 10 April 2020
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-02848-4_417-2
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Browne, Sir Thomas- Published:
- 26 January 2017
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-02848-4_417-1