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For Samuel Johnson, poetical judgments were no mere exercise in dry evaluation; rather, they reflected deep emotional responsiveness. In this provocative study, Philip Smallwood argues for experiencing Johnson's critical texts as artworks in their own right. The criticism, he suggests, often springs from emotional sources of great personal intensity and depth, inspiring translation of criticism into poetry and channelling prose's poetic potential. Through consideration of other critics, Smallwood highlights singularities in Johnson's judgments and approach, showing how such judgments are irreducible to philosophical doctrines. 'Ideas', otherwise the material of criticism's propensity to systems and theories, exist for Johnson as feelings that 'slumber in the heart.' Revealing Johnson's humour and intellectual reach, Smallwood frames his criticism in unresolved ironies of time and forms of historical change. This title is part of the Flip it Open Programme and may also be available Open Access. Check our website Cambridge Core for details.
Winner, 2024 Choice Awards
‘Philip Smallwood has been writing insightfully and eloquently about Samuel Johnson for thirty years. The Literary Criticism of Samuel Johnson confirms his standing as one of our most authoritative, appealing scholars of Johnson and literature. Drawing on a lifetime of reading and thinking Smallwood sensitively explores the artistic implications and human depths of Johnson's engagement with literature and experience – not only within the parameters of Johnson's critical traditions, both European and Classical, but particularly in his enduring concern with action, love, loss, time, death, compassion, happiness, and beginnings and endings, in which his criticism is rooted. Written with an elegance and honesty commensurate with their subject, these essays cohere to disclose a Johnson whose heart and mind inform a literary personality that continues to challenge us intellectually and to resonate with our emotional needs.'
Greg Clingham - Professor of English Literature, Bucknell University
‘An enquiring defence of Johnson as critic, and of literary criticism as a creative living medium, Philip Smallwood's new book is absorbing, richly informed and beautifully exemplified.'
Freya Johnston - Professor of English Literature, University of Oxford
‘An incisive book about the motives and operations of Samuel Johnson’s literary criticism …’
Michael Adams Source: Modern Philology
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