Synopses & Reviews
This book offers an analysis of the life and thought of Samuel Johnson from a historian's viewpoint, which reverses the orthodoxy that has dominated the subject for over thirty years. J.C.D. Clark presents here a Johnson strikingly different from the apolitical, pragmatic and eccentric figure who emerges from the pages of most students of English literature. Johnson's commitments and conflicts in religion and politics are reconstructed; his role in the literary dynamics of his age is revealed against a new context for English cultural politics between the Restoration and the age of Romanticism.
Synopsis
This book offers the first analysis of the life and thought of the writer Samuel Johnson from an historianâs viewpoint, reversing the orthodoxy which has dominated the subject for over thirty years. Jonathan Clark, who has written extensively on English and American religion, ideology and politics in the eighteenth century, presents here a Johnson strikingly different from the apolitical, pragmatic and eccentric figure who emerges from the pages of most students of English literature. The book will therefore be of interest not only to Johnsonians but to historians of ideas and students of English literature.
Synopsis
This book offers the first analysis of the life and thought of the writer Samuel Johnson from an historianâs viewpoint, reversing the orthodoxy which has dominated the subject for over thirty years. Jonathan Clark presents here a strikingly different Johnson from the usual apolitical, pragmatic and eccentric figure of the standard accounts.
Table of Contents
List of illustrations; Preface; Abbreviations; Introduction; 1. Politics, literature and the culture of humanism; 2. Johnson and the Anglo-Latin tradition; 3. The political culture of Oxford University, 1715 1768; 4. Johnsonâs career and the question of oaths, 1709 1758; 5. Johnson and the nonjurors; 6. Johnsonâs political conduct, 1737 1760; 7. Johnsonâs political opinions, 1760 1784; 8. Johnsonâs writings, 1760 1781; 9. âSophistryâ, âindiscretionâ, âfalsehoodâ: the denigration of Samuel Johnson, 1775 1832.