The Interpretation of Samuel Johnson

by Clark, J.C.D.; Erskine Hill, Howard; Erskine-Hill, Howard

• ISBN13: 9780230356009
• ISBN10: 0230356001
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2012-07-17
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan

Summary

A major academic controversy has raged in recent years over the analysis of the political and religious commitments of Samuel Johnson, the most commanding of the 'commanding heights' of eighteenth-century English letters. This book, one of a trilogy from Palgrave, brings that debate to a decisive conclusion, retrieving the 'historic Johnson.'

Author Biography

Jonathan Clark was educated at Cambridge, UK, where he took his PhD, and was a Fellow of Peterhouse. He was subsequently a Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford, and Visiting Professor at the Committee on Social Thought of the University of Chicago. He currently holds the Hall Distinguished professorship of British History at the University of Kansas, and is writing a study of the political and social ideas of Thomas Paine. Howard Erskine-Hill studied English and Philosophy at Nottingham University, UK; he then taught at University College Swansea. In 1969 he became Lecturer in English at Cambridge, and retired as Professor of English. He holds a Cambridge higher doctorate, is a Fellow of the British Academy, and has recently completed a biography of Alexander Pope.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations	p. viii
Acknowledgements	p. ix
Preface	p. x
Notes on Contributors	p. xi
List of Abbreviations	p. xiii
Introduction	p. 1
Planning a Life of Johnson	p. 11
Attack and Mask: James Boswell's Indebtedness to Sir John Hawkins' Life of Samuel Johnson	p. 43
Boswell and the Making of Johnson	p. 72
'The Casuistical Question': Oaths and Hypocrisy in the Writings of Johnson and Bolingbroke	p. 84
Fire under the Ashes: Johnson's Lives of the Poets as Narratives of History	p. 120
Johnson, Macpherson and the Memoirs of the Marshal Duke of Berwick	p. 165
Conclusion: The Forgotten Room: Discovery and Denial in Recent Johnson Studies	p. 202
Index	p. 224
Table of Contents provided by Ingram. All Rights Reserved.