Johnson's MiltonSamuel Johnson is often represented as primarily antagonistic or antipathetic to Milton. Yet his imaginative and intellectual engagement with Milton's life and writing extended across the entire span of his own varied writing career. As essayist, poet, lexicographer, critic and biographer - above all as reader - Johnson developed a controversial, fascinating and productive literary relationship with his powerful predecessor. To understand how Johnson creatively appropriates Milton's texts, how he critically challenges yet also confirms Milton's status, and how he constructs him as a biographical subject, is to deepen the modern reader's understanding of both writers in the context of historical continuity and change. Christine Rees's insightful study will be of interest not only to Milton and Johnson specialists, but to all scholars of early modern literary history and biography. |
Contents
| 1 | |
| 5 | |
Part II Johnson the critic assessing Miltons achievement | 95 |
Part III Johnson the biographer constructing Miltons character | 189 |
Notes | 248 |
| 274 | |
| 291 | |
Common terms and phrases
Adam and eve Adam’s Addison admirers angels Areopagitica argument Aspasia authority biographers blank verse Boswell century choice Christian Comus context contrast Critical Heritage Dictionary discourse drama Early Lives eighteenth-century elegy evidence experience fiction gender genius genre Griffin happy Valley Human Wishes ical Il Penseroso imagination imlac innocence intellectual Irene John Milton Johnson’s criticism judgement L’Allegro language later latin liberty lines literary Lives i. p. Livesi lonsdale Lycidas marriage masque metaphor Milton criticism Milton’s poetry Milton’s political Milton’s satan Miltonic allusion Miltonists mind modern criticism narrative nature newton original Paradise Lost 1749 passage pastoral perhaps periodical essays pleasure poem poet poetic praise Preface prose prosody quotation Rambler essays Raphael’s Rasselas readers reading reason Regaining Paradise rhetorical Richardson Samson Agonistes Samuel Johnson satan seems sense shakespeare shawcross sonnet sublime tion toland truth Vanity of Human Warton writing Yale iV Yale XVi