The Literary Criticism of Samuel Johnson
Forms of Artistry and Thought
$110.00 (F)
- Author: Philip Smallwood, Birmingham City University
- Date Published: September 2023
- availability: Available
- format: Hardback
- isbn: 9781009369985
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For Samuel Johnson, poetical judgments were no mere exercise in dry evaluation; rather, they reflected deep emotional responsiveness. In this provocative study, Philip Smallwood argues for experiencing Johnson's critical texts as artworks in their own right. The criticism, he suggests, often springs from emotional sources of great personal intensity and depth, inspiring translation of criticism into poetry and channelling prose's poetic potential. Through consideration of other critics, Smallwood highlights singularities in Johnson's judgments and approach, showing how such judgments are irreducible to philosophical doctrines. 'Ideas', otherwise the material of criticism's propensity to systems and theories, exist for Johnson as feelings that 'slumber in the heart.' Revealing Johnson's humour and intellectual reach, Smallwood frames his criticism in unresolved ironies of time and forms of historical change. This title is part of the Flip it Open Programme and may also be available Open Access. Check our website Cambridge Core for details.
Read more- Provides a poetically sensitive reading of Johnson's critical prose in general and of numerous particular judgments, unearthing the expressive power of English literary criticism
- Encourages readers to embrace—while also seeing beyond—the theoretical and intellectual content of past literary criticism to its emotional and personal sources
- Invites readers to make further fruitful comparisons between Johnson and the greatest thinkers and writers within a humanistic tradition, revealing also the wisdom of Johnson's critical remarks in their relation to life
Reviews & endorsements
‘Philip Smallwood has been writing insightfully and eloquently about Samuel Johnson for thirty years. The Literary Criticism of Samuel Johnson confirms his standing as one of our most authoritative, appealing scholars of Johnson and literature. Drawing on a lifetime of reading and thinking Smallwood sensitively explores the artistic implications and human depths of Johnson's engagement with literature and experience – not only within the parameters of Johnson's critical traditions, both European and Classical, but particularly in his enduring concern with action, love, loss, time, death, compassion, happiness, and beginnings and endings, in which his criticism is rooted. Written with an elegance and honesty commensurate with their subject, these essays cohere to disclose a Johnson whose heart and mind inform a literary personality that continues to challenge us intellectually and to resonate with our emotional needs.' Greg Clingham, Professor of English Literature, Bucknell University
See more reviews‘An enquiring defence of Johnson as critic, and of literary criticism as a creative living medium, Philip Smallwood's new book is absorbing, richly informed and beautifully exemplified.' Freya Johnston, Professor of English Literature, University of Oxford
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×Product details
- Date Published: September 2023
- format: Hardback
- isbn: 9781009369985
- length: 217 pages
- dimensions: 235 x 158 x 18 mm
- weight: 0.47kg
- availability: Available
Table of Contents
Introduction: The criteria of the heart
Part I. Johnson's Criticism and the Forms of Feeling:
1. Johnson's compassion
2. 'The tears stand in my eyes': Johnson and emotion
Part II. Critical Relations and the Art of Literary History:
3. Petty caviller or 'formidable assailant': Johnson reads Dennis
4. Readers curious and common: Johnson, Thomas Warton and historical form
Part III. Johnson, Dramatic Poetry and Thinking:
5. Shakespeare, Johnson and philosophy
6. Two ways of being wise: Johnson, philosophy and Montaigne
Part IV. Time, Truth and History:
7. Johnson and time
8. Truth, fiction and 'undisputed history'
Part V. Editing Lives and Life:
9. Annotated immortality
10. Arts of structure and the rhythm of the lives.
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