Samuel Johnson: The Life of an AuthorHarvard University Press, 2009 M07 1 - 384 pages He was a servant to the public, a writer for hire. He was a hero, an author adding to the glory of his nation. But can a writer be both hack and hero? The career of Samuel Johnson, recounted here by Lawrence Lipking, proves that the two can be one. And it further proves, in its enduring interest for readers, that academic fashions today may be a bit hasty in pronouncing the "death of the author." |
From inside the book
Results 1-5 of 90
... poet's life , he suggests , ought to be the poems that he makes . This book tries to see his life in the same way . It is less concerned with his personality , or even his self , than with his identity as an author , the result of some ...
... poets , or anything else for which money is offered he thinks of himself as a scholar and poet as well , in some ways closer to the ancients or to the Renaissance humanists than to most contemporaries . The author that he creates in his ...
... Poet and his Theme . The sentiment is of course conventional . Yet it is also rather shocking in its hasty refusal of promise . Young Johnson will not even pause for the usual carpe diem . Committing violence against nature , he does ...
... poets tend to be well acquainted with the psy- chology of the narcissus . Putting aside this temptation , an ... poet would know . Those idols fade ; a young man needs to stake his hopes on higher things . Johnson's harping on ...
... poet for rhythms that build a climax or spring a trap . Such hints of prosody often help shape a distinctive prose ... poets of the late seventeenth and early eigh- teenth centuries in his head , and turned them into choruses of prose ...
Contents
11 | |
34 | |
48 | |
Preferments Gate The Vanity of Human Wishes | 86 |
Man of Letters A Dictionary of the English Language | 103 |
The Living World The Rambler | 145 |
Reclaiming Imagination Rasselas | 173 |
The Theater of Mind The Plays of William Shakespeare | 198 |
Journeying Westward Political Writings A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland | 234 |
Touching the Shore The Lives of the English Poets | 259 |
The Life to Come Johnsons Endings | 295 |
Abbreviation | 307 |
Notes | 309 |
Index | 363 |