Notes on Samuel Johnson (1709-84), Rasselas (1759)
- Samuel
Johnson was born in Lichfeld as the son of a bookseller. His childhood
was marred by ill health: a tubercular infection affected both his
sight and hearing and his face was scarred by scrofula. Johnson was
educated at Pembroke College, Oxford. His father died in 1731 and left
the family in poverty. Johnson's studies were cut short and he returned
to Lichfield, affected by depression, which haunted him for his life.
- He worked
as a teacher at the grammar school in Market Bosworth and published his
first essays in the Birmingham Journal. In 1735 he married Elisabeth
Porter, a widow 20 years his senior. They started a school, but it did
not prosper. Johnson's lack of formal education and convulsive
mannerisms hindered his success as a teacher.
- Two years
later they moved to London where Johnson worked for Edward Cave, the
founder of The Gentleman's Magazine.
When he applied to a publisher for employment, he was found unfit for
the job. "You had better get a porter's knot and carry trunks," he was
advised. He then began working on a major English dictionary.
- A Dictionary of the English Language
was published finally in 1755, and the abridged edition in 1756.
Johnson's financial situation was weak, although the work as a whole
remained without rival until the creation of the Oxford English Dictionary
(1884-1928). Johnson wrote the definitions of over 40,000 words,
illustrating them with about 114,000 quotations drawn from every field
of learning. Jack
Lynch has recently published an abridged edition of Johnson's
dictionary.
- Johnson was
an extremely prolific writer; in addition to Rasselas, he also
published essays on a variety of topics including political satire; he
also published poetry, drama, criticism, and journalism.
- The new
monarch George III awarded Johnson in 1762 an annual pension, which
improved his circumstances. He spent his time in coffee houses in
conversation and in idleness. In 1763 he met the young Scot James
Boswell,
who became later his biographer and with whom he formed one of the most
famous friendships in literary history. With Boswell he traveled in
1773 in Scotland and published his observations in A Journey to the Western Islands of
Scotland (1775). Though Boswell's Life of Samuel Johnson is perhaps
the most famous biography ever written, it severely distorted Johnson's
personality, life, and literary influence, perhaps inadvertently
depriving him of a much
more distinguished standing in the literary canon.
- For
example, Boswell depicts Johnson as an egregious misogynist. According
to one critic, however, Johnson's biographical materials, considered on
their own, show him to be "an individual who has a talent for intimate,
Platonic friendship with women--a demanding mentor, collaborator, and
editor, whose rigor was a form of respect and who encouraged women to
stake their claim in eighteenth-century literary society" (Geller 82).
On the occasion of the publication of Charlotte Lennox's first novel,
Harriet Stuart, Johnson
threw an all-night part to celebrate, "crowning
her with a laurel of bay leaves" (83). Additionally, John "effusively
praised [Francis] Burney's 1778 novel Evelina,
and he also encouraged
her to learn Latin, write drama, publish under her own name, and assert
herself publicly in conversation" (83). These relationships and others
show that Johnson had an extensive network of female friends and
colleagues whom he encouraged and supported throughout his lifetime.
- Johnson
spent the summer of 1784 visiting Lichfield, Birmingham, and Oxford and
returned to London depressed. He died during the night of 13 December
and was buried in Westminster Abbey. Although Johnson's celebrity at
that time was phenomenal, views about him as a pedantic and pompous
writer came to dominate the 19th century. Not until writers of the
Modern period such as Ford Madox Ford and T. S. Eliot did Johnson again
begin to be appreciated as an important, influential author.
- Some Themes in Rasselas:
- Destructive
capacities of the human imagination: imagination is the wellspring of
vice.
- Humans
need to labor, engage in the world.
- The text
ostensibly takes the form of a travel adventure set in an "exotic"
location, but the narrative turns into a platonic dialogue between
genderless individuals, which reflects the didactic nature of Johnson's
project. In this sense it can be seen as a satire of 18th-century
travel narratives and of "novels" in general.
- Imlac's
theory about poetry: it's the highest literary form. Poetry
communicates a knowledge that no one today really believes in. We have
inherited the idea of the lyric from Wordsworth, which is usually very
personal. Imlac's theory of poetry is that it embraces everything from
the high to the low. Remember that lots of novels have come out by this
time and have begun to replace the epic in the hierarchy of literary
forms. Johnson's defense of poetry is almost anachronistic in a sense.
Imlac says that the poet has to know everything, but Rasselas says,
then no one could ever be a poet. Johnson's point is that we should not
get lost in "the streaks of the tulip": don't get caught up in the
minor details and be blinded to the larger truths. If something is
going to be effective as art, it has to speak to the universal, the
human condition in some way, deal with general truths in some way.
Today we wouldn't agree, but in the eighteenth century, that's still
the idea. That's what Clarissa is saying to Belinda. The romantics turn
that on its head, saying that you can see general truths in the
particular. You can see larger truths in the streaks of the tulip.
- Rasselas is
on a quest to find his "choice in life," the one that will make him
happy. Even before we get to the mid-point of the novel, however, we
can see that he isn't going to find it. Along his journey, we hear a
number of very interesting conversations. What do they seem to be
saying in general about the pursuit of knowledge and/or happiness?
- The
astronomer in Rasselas is a
direct link to Swift's flying island in Gulliver's Travels. But Johnson
sees the astronomer
as the lot of all of us who become so introspective and isolated that
we lose sight of living in the world. Johnson is very modern in his
assertion that individuals must pour their energy into the external
world; otherwise, the imagination festers inside and creates inner
demons and imaginary problems. Left to oneself, with no specific
purpose, the imagination preys upon one's mind. Life in the Happy
Valley, where no labor is necessary, is not condusive to a productive,
meaningful life.
- Johnson's
views on marriage expressed in Rasselas
are quite notable within the context of 18th-century British literature
as a whole. Rasselas says, "Marriage is evidently the dictate of
nature; men and women were made to be companions of each other, and
therefore I cannot be persuaded but that marriage is one of the means
of happiness." Johnson uses a male character to vocalize these beliefs
and expose their naïveté. Rasselas describes marriage in a
series of "ideal pictures," the kind of sentimental images that one
would expect to hear from a young girl saturated with conduct books and
romantic novels from this period.
- Nekayah's
argument, on the other hand, is that (1) the basis of conjugal life is
power rather than affection; (2) that marriage is not necessary for the
propagation of the species; (3) and that maturity does not improve
domestic relationships. Her descriptions of marital discord mirror
actual characters in many 18th-century novels. Notice what Nekayah's
final goal is as the end of the novel--how does it relate to the views
she has expressed in this chapter?
- How do the
attitudes toward gender and marriage in Rasselas compare to those in The Rape of the Lock? Some Reflections Upon Marriage? The Country Wife? Other works we
have read?
Sources
- Clingham,
Greg, ed. The Cambridge Companion to
Samuel Johnson. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1997.
- Geller,
Jaclyn. "The Unnarrated Life: Samuel Johnson, Female Friendship, and
the Rise of the Novel Revisited." Johnson
Re-Visioned. Ed. Philip Smallwood. Lewisburg: Bucknell UP, 2001.
80-98.
- Johnson,
Samuel. The History of Rasselas,
Prince of Abissinia. Ed. J. P. Hardy. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1988.
- "Samuel
Johnson, 1709-1784." Books and
Writers. 2000. 3 Mar. 2004. <
http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/samuelj.htm>.

370B Home