Clingham

To mark the tercentenary of Samuel Johnson's birth in 2009, the specially-commissioned essays contained here review his scholarly reputation. An international team of experts reflects authoritatively on the various dimensions of literary, historical, critical and ethical life touched by Johnson's extraordinary achievement. The volume distinctively casts its net widely and combines consistently innovative thinking on Johnson's historical role with a fresh sense of present criticism. Chapters cover subjects as diverse as Johnson's moral philosophy, his legal thought, his influence on Jane Austen, and the question of the Johnson canon. The contributors examine the larger theoretical and scholarly contexts in which it is now possible to situate his work, and from which it may often be necessary to differentiate it. All the contributors have a distinguished record of scholarship in eighteenth-century studies, Johnson scholarship, and cultural history and theory.

To mark the tercentenary of Samuel Johnson's birth in 2009, the specially-commissioned essays contained here review his scholarly reputation. An international team of experts reflects authoritatively on the various dimensions of literary, historical, critical and ethical life touched by Johnson's extraordinary achievement. The volume distinctively casts its net widely and combines consistently innovative thinking on Johnson's historical role with a fresh sense of present criticism. Chapters cover subjects as diverse as Johnson's moral philosophy, his legal thought, his influence on Jane Austen, and the question of the Johnson canon. The contributors examine the larger theoretical and scholarly contexts in which it is now possible to situate his work, and from which it may often be necessary to differentiate it. All the contributors have a distinguished record of scholarship in eighteenth-century studies, Johnson scholarship, and cultural history and theory.

This is a radical introduction to the Life of Johnson. It discusses the main structural, dramatic, historical and imaginative aspects of the work, and establishes its intellectual contexts: Hume's philosophy, earlier biographical writings by Boswell, and the French and German Enlightenment and romantic traditions. Professor Clingham offers an account of the Life based upon reassessment of the nature of biography, of Boswell's style and thought, and of Johnson's own works. As he examines the Life's complex psychological, emotional and artistic facets, a fresh picture of Boswell as biographer emerges. The book also provides a table of the principal scenes and conversations in the Life, as well as a chronological table of Boswell's life and times and a guide to further reading.

Boswell's Life of Johnson is established as one of the foremost literary biographies in the English language. This 1991 collection of essays, commemorating its bicentenary, investigates Boswell's achievements and limitations in both literary and personal contexts, and goes beyond the Life to examine the full range of Boswell's writings and interests (in legal, social, theological, political and linguistic fields). Drawing Boswell out of Johnson's shadow, the volume places him in a wider context, juxtaposing Boswell with other contemporaries and compatriots in the Scottish enlightenment, such as Hume, Robertson and Blair. In addition it investigates some of the critical and theoretical questions surrounding the notion of biographical representation in the Life itself. Boswell emerges as a writer engaged throughout his literary career in constructing a self or series of selves out of his divided Scottish identity. This collection combines archival research with fresh critical perspective

Johnson, Writing, and Memory demonstrates the importance of memory in Samuel Johnson's oeuvre. Greg Clingham argues that this is a notion of memory that is derived from the process of historical and creative writing, and is found to be embodied in works of literature and other cultural forms. He examines Johnson's writing, including his biographical writing, as it intersects with eighteenth-century thought on literature, history, fiction and law and in its subsequent compatibility with and resistance to modern theory. Clingham's widely researched study provides an account of Johnson's intellectual positions that incorporates the challenges they pose to recent critical theory, and argues for Johnson's inclusion in a new theorisation of terms such as 'authority', 'nature' and 'memory'. Clingham does this work of intellectual abstraction while remaining focused in the concrete realities of Johnson's writing itself, offering a theoretically nuanced and original account of Johnson's work.

New Essays on Samuel Johnson is a collection of the best thinking and writing currently available on the great English writer Samuel Johnson. It presents a primer of criticism that revaluates him with