Samuel Johnson And The Art Of Sinking 1709-1791

by Johnston, Freya

• ISBN13: 9780199251827
• ISBN10: 0199251827
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2005-04-28
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

The traditional view of Samuel Johnson as hostile to particulars, trifles, and aesthetic mediocrity only half-explains his authorial character. Samuel Johnson and the Art of Sinking 1709-1791 argues that, in a period dominated by social and literary hierarchies, Johnson's works reveal adefining interest in 'little', 'mean', or 'low' topics and people.Freya Johnston moves away from a critical emphasis on what literature of this period excludes, to consider its modes of including recalcitrant material. Of necessity finite, any piece of writing is informed by the subject matter it omits or to which it indirectly alludes. How can we identify theperipheral topics or characters purportedly 'excluded' from a text, unless it provides compelling inferences that oblige us to supply the omission? In which case, something subtler is at work than barefaced proscription. Rehearsing the comparative merits of great and little things, Johnson and his contemporaries tested the opposing claims of pagan and Christian authority. Ancient criticism, and its eighteenth-century adherents, held that each subject required an appropriate style: little matters call for the low,lofty ones for the high. Yet Gospel writers stressed Christ's incarnation as a praiseworthy and imitable descent to the humanly little -- one that is compatible with the most sublime style. Through a series of close readings, this book examines how Johnson conceived of his relationships to and with the margins of writing and of society. It proposes that his literary and critical practice is neither inclusive nor exclusive in its attitudes towards peripheral things.

Author Biography

Freya Johnson is a Fellow and Lecturer in English at Christ's College, Cambridge. She was previously Enid Welsford Research Fellow in English at Newnham College, Cambridge.

Table of Contents

Note on Texts and Short Titles	xi
Introduction	1	(20)
Inclusion and Exclusion	21	(48)
`Ladies, I am tame; you may stroke me'	28	(7)
Types and Individuals	35	(11)
Catalogues	46	(11)
The General and the Particular	57	(12)
`Voluntary Degradation': Johnson's Prefaces and Dedications	69	(57)
Humility	75	(19)
Enlarging Trifles	94	(14)
Perpetuating Ephemera	108	(9)
Patronage	117	(9)
Diminishing Returns: A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland	126	(56)
The Category of the Diminutive	141	(9)
Elegance	150	(15)
The Rhetoric of Diminution: Litotes	165	(7)
A Scottish Savage	172	(10)
Stooping to Conquer: Johnsonian Biography	182	(61)
The Lives of the Poets	194	(8)
Paltry Circumstances	202	(13)
Corrective Readings: Pope and Blackmore, Milton and Watts	215	(16)
Dr Johnson and Dr Levet: The Likeness of Men	231	(12)
Bibliography: Works Cited	243	(14)
Index	257