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Recording in her diary her last interview with Samuel Johnson, Fanny Burney relates that the Doctor spoke "with as much fire, spirit, wit, and truth of criticis and judgement, as ever yet I have heard him," and that he declared, "'Genius is nothing more than knowing the use of tools, but there must be tools for it to use.'" Throughout his literary career, Johnson had frequently pondered over the components of genius, but never before had he given it so succinct a definition. Three immediate questions come to mind. What are the tools of genius? On what materials should they be used? To what ultimate purpose should the genius work? [...]

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An examination of Samuel Johnson’s essays and his tragedy, Irene, and his Oriental tale, Rasselas, reveals that his concept of womanhood and his views on the education of woman and her role in society amount to a thorough-going criticism of the established views of eighteenth-century society. His views are in advance of those of his age. Johnson viewed the question of woman with that same practical good sense which he had brought to bear on literary criticism. It was important he said "to distinguish nature from custom: or that which is established because it was right, from that which is right only because it is established." Johnson thought that, so far as women were concerned, custom had dictated views and attitudes which reason denied. Because society's concept of womanhood emphasized the physical and Johnson’s, the mental, there was little agreement about her education and her role in the home. Johnson's views on women will be drawn from his works rather than from comments recorded by his biographers, James Boswell, Mrs. Thrale, or Sir John Hawkins, or from remarks made in the diaries and letters of Fanny Burney and Hannah More. With the exception of excerpts in Chapter V, comments made by others will be used only as substantiating evidence. In Chapter V, I have found it necessary to draw heavily on comments made by others simply because Johnson passed few remarks about anyone he knew — man or woman. Chapter I sets forth eighteenth-century views on women from the viewpoint of society and from that of such men of letters as Addison, Steele, Pope, Defoe, Swift, and Johnson. The next two chapters will follow a chronological order; the discussion of Johnson’s views on the education of women will precede his views on marriage and the woman's role in the home. The fourth chapter, a discussion of Johnson's figure of womanhood from Irene and Rasselas can be considered as a summation of Chapters II and III, for these two works are really, a comprehensive study of what Johnson had said about the education of women and their role in society in his Rambler, Idler, and Adventurer. This chapter will also include an analysis of Johnson's female characters as women. The purpose of the concluding chapter is to show that Johnson's estimation of womankind and his views on the education of women and their role in society are not to be taken lightly. Many men express one opinion about women but really believe something quite different. But not Johnson. He chose his female friends for those same qualities he said in his works were becoming womanhood. In life he treated them as he had written of them — with respect and without condescension. / Arts, Faculty of / English, Department of / Graduate

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Dr. Samuel Johnson noted in his "Preface to Shakespeare" that ". . . human judgment, though it be gradually gaining upon certainty never becomes infallible . . . ." This observation is the central concern which unifies the diversity of thought and form in Johnson's work, a central unity which this thesis has illustrated chiefly with examples from The Rambler.The first of six chapters chronologically surveys the scholarship which is related to this topic, noting first that the criticism generally has overlooked Johnson's concern with questions about the nature of perception, judgment, comprehension, and understanding. Instead typical evaluations of Johnson's work have described it as attitude or prejudice rendered in grandiloquent style--content contained within static form--a flat conception which either ignores or misunderstands Johnson's process of building into his work questions concerning the perceptions embodied there. This chapter begins by documenting an initial barrier to anunderstanding of Johnson's work: the interference of his personality. Throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, biographies of Johnson overshadowed his own work, largely deflecting serious critical attention from that work. However, the survey further notes that there were critics during these centuries who observed this problem and argued for a redirected scholarly attention to the work itself. The survey then concludes by noting that these arguments were picked up in the twentieth century and translated into serious textual criticism of Johnson's work, particularly his periodical essays.Chapter two argues that for a full understanding of Johnson's work, it must be viewed against the backdrop of a shaping concern. The chapter identifies this concern as Johnson's desire to connect experience with its meaning or consequence. Although we automatically assume that monumental or panoramic happenings have meaning, Johnson desired to make clear that these larger meanings were merely the accumulation of less significant meanings. Consequently, the concern which shapes and directs his work is his effort to illuminate a connection between the seemingly insignificant events of everyday life and the larger human meaning of which they are a part.Using citations from Johnson's Dictionary, Rasselas, and the Rambler, chapter three documents Johnson's additional perception that the human condition is a state of "universal uncertainty." In Johnson's view, uncertainty is a universally experienced characteristic of the human condition. Indeed, uncertainty is not simply one part of our condition; it comprises human experience.This uncertain condition results in Johnson's frequently expressed reservations about the reliability of human judgment. Chapter four analyzes Johnson's assertion that individual perception is inferior to the accumulating mass of a collective human understanding.Johnson's alternative response to the demands of uncertainty is described in chapter five. To counteract the egocentricity of individual perception, Johnson argues that judgment must be the product of moral reflection rather than intellectual ratiocination.This assertion then is embodied in a writing process which constantly attempts to outmaneuver the ability of the human intelligence to defeat its own best interests--a tendency which is largely the product of solipsistic shortsightedness. Chapter six provides examples of this writing process as it occurs in particular essays. Explications of these essays then demonstrate the active vision which is the paper's major subject.

One goal of the present study is to emphasize Johnson's "talent for fiction, the range of his comic invention, and the subtlety of his tone." A substantial group of essays from all three serials, those written in the form of letters ostensibly submitted to the essayist by his readers, appears to offer many examples of the inventiveness of Johnson's mind, and it is to this group that the term epistolary essays refers. Johnson was following a well-established tradition in utilizing the device of the imaginary correspondent, but the main objective of this dissertation is to analyze the various personae which Johnson adopted in these essays.

English Studies / M.A. (English)

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