Dr.

Samuel Johnson
Age of Johnson
 Literature of the 18th century reflects the conflict between the two factors of artistic
creation: reason and emotion.
 Reason – the dominant force since the middle of the 17th century, and under its sway,
emotional and imaginative elements were repressed and artistic expression of deeply
personal feelings were looked upon with distrust.
 But the romantic spirit began to reassert itself and the age of Johnson witnessed the
co-existence of two main types of criticism: one representing the ideals of reason and
common sense, the other that of emotion and imagination

Johnson’s critical outlook

Chief works:

 Best remembered for his two-volume Dictionary of the English Language, first
published in 1755
 Lives of the English Poets (1783)
 Eight-volume edition of Shakespeare (1765)
 Most famous poem The Vanity of Human Wishes (1749), a speculation on the
emptiness of worldly pursuits
 Wrote drama and a fictional work The History of Rasselas (1759)
 Numerous essays in periodicals such as the Rambler, the Adventurer and
the Idler
 In 1737 moved from his native town of Lichfield to London, which became the
center of his literary life
 Moved in an intellectual circle that included the conservative thinker Edmund
Burke, the painter Joshua Reynolds, and the economist Adam Smith
 Johnson’s own biography was recorded by his friend James Boswell – Life of
Samuel Johnson (1791).

Johnson’s critical outlook

 Represents the persistence of classical dogma

 Belongs to the school of tradition, discipline and authority
 He asserts the doctrines of the classical school authoritatively and his classicism
has been called “Doctrinal classicism”
 Definition of “nature”: Johnson does not mean the world of external, physical
nature, but rather human nature in its universal and historical embodiment of
reason and moral sensibility
Lives of the Most Eminent English Poets
 Alternatively known by the shorter title Lives of the Poets
 Biographical and critical study of 52 poets
 Comments on various genres and styles of poetry, the nature of imitation, the
problems of translation, the classical rules of art, and the duties of literary criticism

Typical structure and composition of each preface contributes important elements to

both the art of biography and the theory and practice of literary criticism: places the
work of a given poet within a detailed account of his political context, personal
circumstances, learning, character, and relationship with his literary contemporaries
and with the public - cites the ways in which a given poet was praised and blamed;
engages in a close analysis of some of the poet’s verses; and attempts a general,
comparative estimate of the poet’s greatness and significance, and his place in the
English literary tradition.

Definition of poetry: “the art of uniting pleasure with truth, by calling imagination to the
help of reason”

Rejection of Blank verse and defense of rhyme:

 According to Johnson, poetry should express natural sentiment in dignified

language, but the language should not be too remote from the speech of daily life
 The use of too many new words destroys the intimacy and relation between the
writer and reader
 But if the verse is easy, natural and familiar, why not use prose which is the
natural medium of expression for men
 Poetry is preferred to prose only for the addition of pleasure which comes from
verse – the pleasure of melody and pattern
 Therefore, rhyme is essential for poetry for it gives pleasure and imparts
emphasis
 Blank verse can be permitted for poets who describe wild landscapes or indulge
in unfettered imagination
 Milton, Thomson and Young may use it but not other lesser poets

 As a critic, Johnson paid no heed to music and imagination. He found Lycidas “easy,
vulgar, and therefore, disgusting”

 He aimed to reintroduce sincerity into literature, make it actual and moving, and to
rid it of artificiality and far-fetched themes

 His aim was to use poetry for moral instruction.

Preface to Shakespeare
 Johnson’s appraisal of Shakespeare.
 Johnson begins his preface by commenting on the debate on the relative virtues
of ancient and modern writers.
 Says that the excellence of the ancient authors is based on a “gradual and
comparative” estimate
 He claims for Shakespeare the status of an ‘ancient’. He has already stood the test
of time: his reputation has survived the customs, opinions, and circumstances of
his time

Preface to Shakespeare: Reasons behind Shakespeare's

success
1. He says that Shakespeare is great because there is a just representation of a
general human nature. By “general nature,” Johnson refers to the avoidance of
particular manners and passing customs and the foundation of one’s work on the
truths that are permanent and universal. His characters are not molded by the
accidents of time, place, and local custom; rather, they “act and speak by the
influence of those general passions and principles by which all minds are
agitated.” Other poets, says Johnson, present a character as an individual; in
Shakespeare, character “is commonly a species.”
2. His characters are universal, but they are also true to type.
3. In particular, Johnson claimed that "... his heroes are men, ... the love and
hatred, the hopes and fears, of his chief personages are such as common to other
human beings.”. In contrast with the “hyperbolical or aggravated characters” of
most playwrights, Shakespeare’s personages are not heroes but men; he
expresses “human sentiments in human language”
4. Indeed, in virtue of his use of durable speech derived from “the common
intercourse of life,” Johnson views Shakespeare as “one of the original masters of
our language

Preface to Shakespeare: Tragi-comedy

Johnson now defends Shakespeare against charges brought by critics and writers such
as John Dennis, Thomas Rymer, and Voltaire. These critics argue that Shakespeare’s
characters insufficiently reflect their time period and status, that his Romans, for
example, are not sufficiently Roman, and his kings not sufficiently royal. Johnson
retorts that Shakespeare “always makes nature predominate over accident; and . . . he
preserves the essential character,” extricated from accidental conventions and the
“casual distinction of country and condition” (65–66).
Defence of Tragi-comdey

A more serious form of censure concerns Shakespeare’s mixing of comic and tragic
scenes, thereby violating the classical distinction between tragedy and comedy. Johnson
acknowledges that Shakespeare’s plays “are not in the rigorous and critical sense either
tragedies or comedies, but compositions of a distinct kind; exhibiting the real state of
sublunary nature, which partakes of good and evil, joy and sorrow, mingled with endless
variety of proportion and innumerable modes of combination.”

He defends Shakespeare’s tragi-comedies:

1. Shakespeare is true to nature – because it combines in itself good and evil, joy
and sorrow, just as in real life.
2. The interchange of the comic and tragic does not result in any weakening of effect
3. Pleasure consists in variety – tragi-comedy satisfies a greater variety of taste. The
end of writing is to instruct; the end of poetry is to instruct by pleasing. The
mixed genre makes for greater variety, and “all pleasure consists in variety”

Preface to Shakespeare: Flaws

According to Johnson, Shakespeare’s genius lay in comedy – he is natural
in thought and language, but in tragedy, he produces effect with great labour, and
pleases with incident and action.

Flaws:

1. Writes without any moral purpose: problem is that Shakespearemakes no just

distribution of good or evil,” leaving his examples of good and bad actions “to
operate by chance.” There is no poetic justice in his plays
2. The looseness of his plots, whereby the latter part of the play is carelessly
constructed, catastrophes forced and he “omits opportunities of instructing or
delighting”
3. Anachronisms: the lack of regard for distinction of time or place, such that
persons from one age or place are indiscriminately given attributes pertaining to
other eras and locations;
4. In comedy, he is vulgar and licentious in humor; in tragedy he is verbose, the
narrations and set speeches are cold and pompous
5. He has a perverse and digressive fascination with quibbles and wordplay.
Preface to Shakespeare: Defence of Shakespeare's disregard
of Unities
1. There is one type of defect from which Johnson exonerates Shakespeare: neglect
of the classical unities of drama. He rejects the previous belief of the Unities and
establishes a more natural theory on what makes drama work: drama should be
faithful to life. His defence of the Unities
2. His histories are neither comedies nor tragedies and are not subject to the rules of
criticism which were devised for tragedies and comedies
3. He maintains the Unity of action – his plots have complexity and variety of
nature, but they have a beginning, middle, and end, and one event is linked to
another
4. He does not regard the Unities of time and place. According to Johnson, if the
spectator can imagine the stage is one space, he can imagine it as another. There is
no absurdity in showing different actions at different places. Johnson asserts that
spectators are always aware, in their very trip to the theater, that they are
subjecting themselves to a fiction, to a form of temporary self-delusion. And we
must acknowledge that this delusion has “no certain limitation.” If we can believe
that the battle being enacted on stage is real, why would we be counting the clock
or dismissing the changing of places as unreal? We know, from first to last, that
“the stage is only a stage, and that the players are only players”
5. Similarly, the drama may be represented as occurring at different time periods –
the only condition is that the events must be connected with each other.
6. In short the unities are not essential to drama. Their violation often results in
variety and instruction. Johnson concludes that “nothing is essential to the fable,
but unity of action”

Preface to Shakespeare: Role of an editor

Besides direct literary criticism, Johnson emphasised the need to establish a text that
accurately reflects what an author wrote. In his Preface, Johnson analysed the various
versions of Shakespeare's plays and argued how an editor should work on them.
Shakespeare's plays, in particular, had multiple editions that each contained errors from
the printing process. This problem was compounded by careless editors deeming
difficult words as incorrect and changing them in later editions. Johnson believed that
an editor should not alter the text in such a way, and, when creating his own edition of
Shakespeare's plays, he relied on the thousands of quotations and notes that he used in
crafting his Dictionary to restore, to the best of his knowledge, the original text