Samuel Johnson: Literature, Religion and English Cultural Politics from the Restoration to Romanticism

by J. C. D. Clark

Overview

This book offers an analysis of the life and thought of Samuel Johnson from a historian's viewpoint, which reverses the orthodoxy that has dominated the subject for over thirty years. J.C.D. Clark presents here a Johnson strikingly different from the apolitical, pragmatic and eccentric figure who emerges from the pages of most students of English literature. Johnson's commitments and conflicts in religion and politics are reconstructed; his role in the literary dynamics of his age is revealed against a new context for English cultural politics between the Restoration and the age of Romanticism.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780521473040
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	10/27/1994
Pages:	288
Product dimensions:	6.22(w) x 9.29(h) x 0.87(d)

Table of Contents

List of illustrations; Preface; Abbreviations; Introduction; 1. Politics, literature and the culture of humanism; 2. Johnson and the Anglo-Latin tradition; 3. The political culture of Oxford University, 1715–1768; 4. Johnson's career and the question of oaths, 1709–1758; 5. Johnson and the nonjurors; 6. Johnson's political conduct, 1737–1760; 7. Johnson's political opinions, 1760–1784; 8. Johnson's writings, 1760–1781; 9. 'Sophistry', 'indiscretion', 'falsehood': the denigration of Samuel Johnson, 1775–1832.

Editorial Reviews

'This is a stimulating and cogent work which offers a refreshing and provocative re-appraisal of some central features of Johnson's life and work.' David Nokes, The Times Literary Supplement

From the Publisher