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
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... seems unlikely that the arguments of Barthes and Foucault themselves car- ried the day , since those arguments , however suggestive , do not hold up against a searching logical or historical analysis . Yet a pow- erful convergence of ...
... seems not only slightly archaic but self - contradictory . The scandal goes back at least as far as the series of definitions in John- son's own Dictionary ( 1755 ) : 1. The first beginner or mover of any thing ; he to whom any thing ...
... seem irrelevant . Did the Dictionary establish John- son himself as an author ? From one point of view , it seems the work of a compiler ; from another , a new sort of " thing " that made its au- thor's name . Other criteria might ...
... seems to refute the notion that the author is a modern in- vention ( except in the circular sense that the modern conditions and connotations of authorship — for instance , the way that copy- right laws define an author as an owner ...
... seems to occupy a crucial position . Whether or not it is true that the modern author was born exactly when John- son was , and was nurtured as he was by a rapid growth in the book trade , it is certainly true that contracts between ...
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 |