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Samuel Johnson's Dictionary has long been regarded as an epoch-making book, as great a scholarly achievement as the dictionaries of the Italian, French and Spanish academies, yet more enlightened in its pretensions and its politics. For Johnson does not claim to have fixed the language; his authority is not backed by the state; his decisions as to currency, propriety, meaning, and spelling are based on a jumble of general custom, literary precedent, and reason. / I argue that the intellectual origins of Johnsonian standard English lie in Sir Edward Coke's early seventeenth-century restatement of common law doctrine and terms. Salient issues are common law's need to give an account of its antiquated, medieval vocabulary and its place in the constitutional conflict of the seventeenth century. I give an account of other possible influences on Johnson--Latin and English grammars, pedagogy, philosophical speculation on the nature of language, English prose styles, and proposals for an English academy or similar reform--but cannot find in any of them a sufficiently close conceptual parallel.

The impact of Johnson's beliefs and his statements of them have frequently been interpreted as excessively dogmatic. Indeed, some critics have chosen to view Johnson as an eccentric, the last defender of an obsolete neo-classical tradition. Moreover, before the twentieth century's reappraisal of Johnson's literary role, the nineteenth had heaped scorn and derision on his perceptive judgment.As a practitioner of most forms of literary criticism, Johnson was particularly qualified to pass judgment on the "faults and beauties" of. literary compositions. His own distinguished career as poet, biographer, essayist and journalist gave him direct and invaluable knowledge of the creative process so that his pronouncements represent a lifelong interest in and association with literature.Johnson was an empirical critic. His point of departure was always the literary text. Although he acknowledged that rules could be formulated from an analysis of poetry, he stressed the danger of rigid standards of measurement. While Johnson exemplified the classical tradition in criticism, he was no slavish conformist to rules even when they had evolved from the ancients in such matters as the unities.Truth, nature and reason were basic to Johnson's criticism. He insisted that conventions should harmonize with the dictates of reason and common sense. Moreover, he took an independent stand when occasion demanded it. Such was his opposition to the pastoral and his censure of the use of excessive mythology in poetry.Johnson was a strong advocate of general principles. He believed that only general effects were indicative of true worth, and so he repudiated both microscopic and telescopic methods of criticism. Particularity, he maintained in Rasselas, was to be avoided because the minute analysis of poetry fragmented the general spirit of the composition.Johnson was a moral critic. He never judged literature solely on aesthetic grounds, nor did he value literature for its own sake. Life and literature were inseparable for him. He supported the established custom in letters that held that poetry should provide utility and pleasure. Moreover, Johnson insisted that poets should teach man the correct view of manners, morals and social relations, for he strongly believed that literature should inculcate goodness, teach society principles of reason and justice and demonstrate the repression of evil.This study was divided into five chapters. Chapter I, "The Critic and Criticism," is devoted to Johnson's pronouncements on the role of the critic and the nature of criticism. Johnson forcefully provides a rationale for the dual function of poet and critic which he so admirably exemplifies. Chapter II, "Little Prefaces, Little Lives," reviews the circumstances that resulted in his last great work and includes a representative sampling of Johnson's critical declarations as it appears in a number of major and minor lives. Chapters III and, IV present an analysis of six major life studies: Dryden, Milton, Addison, Cowley, Swift and Pope. The accounts of these particular poets were selected for detailed comment because they represent Johnson's critical writing at its best. In each spirited rendition, Johnson weaves a rich tapestry of critical and biographical composition that is unrivalled in English letters.Finally, in Chapter V, "Critical Matrices," significant clusters of ideas are identified around which Johnson's critical attitudes adhere in all of his works. Thus it is with admirable consistency of statement, abundant illustration and clarity of example, that Johnson skillfully presents his view on mythology, imagination, decorum and imitation, as well as on the pastoral and the general and particular in literary criticism. Each of these topics, therefore, is discussed at some length in the last chapter, illustrated by examples from the Lives of the English Poets.

As a man of letters with an exceptionally extensive and diverse output, Samuel Johnson (1709-1784) has invited consideration from a variety of angles. The present study offers a 'reading' of Johnson as a framer of distinctions. His distinction-making activity is viewed as a capital feature of the oeuvre, characterizing it across almost its entire range, a very substantial body of evidence is adduced in support of this reading. Broken up by distinction-type, the mass of evidence sorts itself out into seventeen different categories themselves grouped under seven 'thematic' heads. The organization of the inquiry on taxonomic lines is intended both to throw into relief the multiform character of Johnson's distinction-making praxis (something not heretofore remarked) and also to provide a comprehensive, systematic and easily 'readable' account of it. That the evidence testifying to Johnson's distinction-making turned out to be so voluminous could not but occasion the thought that it might be an involuntary activity, a 'drive' grounded in the very 'set' of his psyche which comes in consequence to be viewed as in some sort 'formed for distinction-making'. This thought evolved into the thesis that the present study undertakes to defend, in doing which it becomes a psychocritical investigation inscribed within the theoretical frame of psychological stylistics whose aim is to make inferences and advance hypotheses about the build and workings of a mind from an analysis of the linguistic and stylistic data it generates.

English Studies / M.A. (English)

Samuel Johnson and Leigh Hunt, as generally representative spokesmen of the Eighteenth Century and the Romantic Age, provide some interesting comments on the theatre of their times. Their individual idiosyncrasies colour their views to some extent. Such inconsistencies, as they pertain to the theatre, are the subject of Chapter I of this essay. Physical conditions in the theatre of Johnson's and Hunt's times, which could not but influence the reception of acted drama, are noted in Chapter II. Johnson, whose views towards the drama are generally those of the literary critic, evaluated the plays of Shakespeare and others mainly in terms of their literary worth. But he was not unaware of the peculiar demands of the theatrical métier, and his well-known prejudice against the players did not prevent him from making a just appraisal of the theatrical fare of his time, according to Johnsonian canons of taste. Hunt shared in the generally idolatrous regard of the Romantics towards Shakespeare. He wrote when the offerings of current playwrights reflected, to him, the age's dearth of dramatic character. He thought some of the earlier offerings, notably those of the Restoration playwrights, were unsuitable to the present mores of taste. But in his voluminous theatre criticism he is principally concerned with the stage presentation of plays, rather than their value as closet drama. As playwrights, Johnson and Hunt made manifest some of their critical principles; and a study of Irene and A Legend of Florence provides a concluding commentary on the worth of their criticism, translated into practice. / Arts, Faculty of / English, Department of / Graduate

Samuel Johnson's literary reputation in his own day was built largely upon his work as a moralist; consequently, the moral stance which forms the basis of this reputation merits more attention than it has hitherto received. It is my purpose in this thesis to establish that Johnson's moral writings, so highly rated by his contemporaries, reveal a distinctive quality of mind and a characteristic moral approach which links the author to the writings and to the moral thought of Francis Bacon. In establishing this connection, the first stage in this thesis is the isolation of common factors in the backgrounds of both men which could lead to a molding of moral attitudes into similar patterns. This is followed by an investigation of the effects of environmental influences and personal tastes which could draw Johnson to the moralist in Francis Bacon. More concrete evidence is sought in Johnson's Dictionary, a work which serves not only as a gauge of Johnson's moral thought but also as a measure of how closely his thought is aligned with that of Francis Bacon. The essays of the two moralists are examined to disclose the drive which directs their moral philosophy into a common path, a path which, leading away from all considerations of the theoretical to the practical service of their fellow man, derives from the same fixed principle of Christian charity. In following this principle of service, both men recognized the value of the essay and the biographical form as instruments of moral instruction; both utilized them as such in a pioneering fashion. Francis Bacon believed that the task of bringing the mind to virtue required, as a prerequisite, a study of the mind and its disorders. Johnson undertakes such a study along the lines envisaged by Bacon, and, in Rasselas, he is shown to be following the methods and directions of the earlier philosopher. Also investigated is the evident parallelism in their mutual concern to protect the mind from the errors of fallacious reasoning. Francis Bacon, in The Coulers of Good and Evill, had made an important contribution to the ethics of evaluation in devising a method of exposing and destroying the fallacies of sophistical reasoning; Samuel Johnson, in his review of Soame Jenyns’ study of evil, illustrates a practical application of this previously neglected method in the logical demolishment of one of the dominant myths of eighteenth-century society. The conclusion drawn from this presentation is that, even where direct influences cannot be ascribed, the evidence indicates powerful affinities in thought and in qualities of mind which draw Samuel Johnson to a similar approach to moral philosophy as that of Francis Bacon and result in similar conclusions about morals. / Arts, Faculty of / English, Department of / Graduate

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Johnson was a rationalist in everything except religion, which, to him, was an adherence to the established Church with its traditional forms. His efforts to maintain his orthodox views in the midst of the controversial beliefs of his age will be the subject of subsequent chapters in this study.