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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.

The purpose of this study is to demonstrate Jane Austen’s illumination of Samuel Johnson’s moral precepts in seeking harmony in choice of life. Austen explores the various decisions of her characters and the effects of those choices on happiness through the use of free indirect discourse. Austen and Johnson both contend that marriage is a potential source of great happiness in an individual’s choice of life, and concordia discors between spouses offers the highest form of contentment in marriage. Johnson believed that the novelist had a moral duty to his or her reader to present characters with attainable virtue. Austen’s illumination of Johnson’s moral precepts and philosophies fulfills the standards Johnson set forth for the novel genre. This study traces the relationship between Johnson’s precepts in Austen’s Emma, Persuasion, Pride and Prejudice, and Sense and Sensibility.

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《自由談》是戰後台灣第一本暢銷國內外的民間雜誌，發行時間從1950年4月到1987年11月為止，沒有官方撐腰而能歷經整個戒嚴時期，並取得巨大成功，是來自於雜誌背後所擁有的海派文化資本、商業手腕，以及因地制宜的在地轉化。本論文以《自由談》為中心，首先比較民國上海《旅行雜誌》，踏察海派文學／文化與台灣當代文學／文化的關聯。其次藉由觀光客凝視（The Tourist Gaze）、世界主義（Cosmopolitanism）和美學世界主義（Aesthetic Cosmopolitanism）等理論，分析《自由談》裡最大宗的國內外遊記，說明藏匿在官方論述保護色之下的「世界想像」，有意無意溢出戒嚴臺灣所限制的禁忌究竟為何。最後集中關注《自由談》的小說，一樣先分析海派小說的在地化轉變，說明如何可能成為台派鴛鴦蝴蝶小說；之後再聚焦以國外為主要敘述空間的嚴肅小說，討論這些小說如何區分自我與他者、確認差異（difference）和認同（identity），進而隔海回望，漸漸打造出不同於官方主導文化、嶄新的「台灣想像」。 / The Rambler（《自由談》） was the first private magazine in post-war Taiwan that sold well domestically and internationally. Published from April 1950 to November 1987 without government support, the magazine thrived throughout the entire martial law period because of the combination of the cultural capital of the Shanghai School, effective business tactics, and a local transformation that underpinned its operation. In this study, The Rambler and its predecessor, China Traveler（《旅行雜誌》）, were compared to investigate the relationship between the Shanghai School literature and contemporary Taiwanese literature. Travelogues collected in The Rambler were subsequently analyzed through the perspectives of tourist gaze, cosmopolitanism, and aesthetic cosmopolitanism to illustrate how the world imagination was influenced by the ruling Nationalist Party, which, wittingly or unwittingly, revealed officially stated taboos in Taiwan under martial law. The local transformations in the Shanghai School fiction reflected in The Rambler were also discussed in this study. Finally, fiction in The Rambler with settings that occurred beyond the borders of Taiwan were examined to discuss how characters in these fictions distinguish between the self and the others, perceived their difference, and identified with their identity to create a different imagination of Taiwan from the officially created one.

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.