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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... sort of story can hardly be taken for granted . Few words provoke more distrust or muddle , in current literary studies , than the label " author . " In the 1960s , when Roland Barthes announced " The Death of the Author " and Michel ...
... sort of " thing " that made its au- thor's name . Other criteria might include the excellence of the work , the individuality of the writing it contains , and its place in the writer's work as a whole . The more one examines these ...
... telling liter- ary critics something they need to know . Yet material causes cannot complete the definition . " Author " is not , in fact , a recent word . In an- cient times , the Latin auctor already indicated one sort 7 Introduction.
... sort of respected and sanctioned writer , and by the fourteenth century English writers like Chaucer had domesticated the term . Did it mean exactly what it means today ( whatever that might be ) ? Of course not ; no word con- trols the ...
... sort of work to make an author's name , and the best of his poems were , as he called them , " imitations . " No previous author , or at any rate no celebrated author , can be so firmly associated with hackwork . Hence if Johnson is ...
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 |