ENGL 321(S) Samuel Johnson and the Literary Tradition
Johnson has been exceptionally influential not only because he was a distinguished writer of poems, essays, criticism, and biographies, but also because he
was the first true historian of English literature, the first who sought to define its
"tradition." We will read Johnson's own works and Boswell's Life of Johnson to
discover Johnson's talents, tastes, and standards as an artist, as a moral and literary critic, and as a man. We next will use Johnson's Preface to Shakespeare and
Lives of the English Poets to examine how this great intelligence assessed writers from the Renaissance through the eighteenth century. While reading his
commentary on Shakespeare and his critical biographies of Milton, Dryden,
Pope, Swift, and Gray, we will analyze selected works by these writers so as to
evaluate Johnson's views and to sharpen our understanding of the relationships
between his standards and our own.
Format: discussion. Requirements: two papers and a final exam.
Prerequisites: a 100-level English course, except 150. Enrollment limit: 25 (expected: 25). Preference given to English majors.
(Criticism or 1700-1900)