E491: History of Literary Criticism

Samuel Johnson Study Questions

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"On Fiction" (Rambler #4)

1. What does the "task of . . . present writers" require, according to Johnson? Why are the new kinds of fiction "in danger from every common reader"? (463)

2. Why do "familiar histories"--what we might call realistic novels--have "greater use than the solemnities of professed morality"? Useful for what? How? What sort of "care ought to be taken"? (464)

3. What is the "chief advantage" such modern fictions "have over real life"? Why shouldn't the world be "promiscuously described"? How is Johnson's notion of imitation qualified? (464)

4. Johnson observes that the "most perfect idea of virtue" should be "exhibited" in narratives. Most perfect in what qualified ways? For what moral purpose? Why is it inadvisable to present audiences with a character of mixed qualities? (465)

5. What model of an audience or reading public do you infer from Johnson's tract? Do you think that modern audiences have changed a great deal? Why or why not? (general question)

From Rasselas

6. What fills Imlac with wonder about the most ancient poets? What sorts of differences, according to him, are "commonly observed" between earlier and later writers? (466)

7. What, according to Imlac, is the "business of the poet"? What is the point of his comment about the "streaks of the tulip" -- for example, is Johnson arguing against what will later be called "romantic particularity?" (467)

8. What does Imlac mean when he says that the poet must write "as a being superior to time and place"? What is Imlac saying about human nature and about the function of art here? (467)

From "Preface to Reading Shakespeare"

9. What test ought to be applied to literary works "of which the excellence is not absolute and definite"? How does Johnson reason in support of this test? (468)

10. What alone, according to Johnson, "can please many, and please long"? Does Shakespeare therefore please? Why? (469)

11. How does Johnson defend Shakespeare against critics who say it is wrong to mix comedy and tragedy? (471-73)

12. What, according to Johnson, is Shakespeare's "first defect"? Why cannot this fault be extenuated by "the barbarity of his age"? (474)

13. How does Johnson reply to those critics who claim that dramatic illusion requires the "unities of time and place"? What indeed are these unities? How does he refute this insistence on the unities? (476-78)

14. What is the exact nature of dramatic illusion, according to Johnson? How exactly is a drama "credited, whenever it moves"? From what does the "delight of a tragedy" proceed? (478)

Discussion Questions

15. How many of Sidney's ideas can you find in Johnson's "On Fiction"? In what ways do you think Johnson differs, or has transformed some of these ideas?

16. If the moral purpose of literature is "to teach us what we may hope, and what we can perform," why is it necessary "for vice . . . to be shewn"? Can literature be therefore regarded as that which presents the realm of human desire and fear? Discuss.

17. Is there anything Aristotelian about Johnson's notion of what constitutes the "most perfect idea of virtue"?

18. What pragmatic concern governs Imlac's advice not to number the streaks of the tulip? How, in other words, is Johnson's theory of mimesis influenced by his concern for his audience?

19. What do you think of Johnson's explanation of how we can delight in contemplating imitations of objects or events which in themselves--in "real life"--we view with pain or disgust or horror? Compare his explanation of this phenomenon with Aristotle's. Whose, in your opinion, is superior? Why? Are these different explanations logically incompatible? (478)

20. Coleridge observes that while watching a play we neither believe nor disbelieve in the reality of the events depicted. Instead, our minds are in a state characterized by a "willing suspension of disbelief." Compare his notion of the dramatic illusion with Johnson's.

Edition: The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. Ed. Vincent B. Leitch. New York: Norton, 2001. ISBN: 0393974294.