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E-book Samuel Johnson's Lives of the Poets : Ethical Literary Criticism

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Penilaian

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The present study of the Lives of the Poets is designed to show that Johnson’s value judgements about literature lead to ethical literary crit-icism that pertains to human problems affecting our daily life and world crises. In his Dictionary, Johnson defines ethics as “the doctrine of morality; a system of morality.”1 While morality and ethics were, according to Johnson, nearly interchangeable in his time, we nowadays usually associate morality with the disapproval of a parent or teacher, accompanied by the scowl of a Headmistress or School Principal. Often concerned with absolutes of right and wrong, morality is ultimately based upon the biblical Ten Commandments. By contrast, ethics, as I shall use the term, is concerned with forwarding what philosophers in the field call “the good life.” Attempting to define this phrase is as futile, Johnson reminds us in the Life of Pope, as defining poetry: we define little more than our own limitations as definers. But often we can agree on what is unethical. For instance, most would accept that a bomb site is less likely than a children’s playground to serve the good life. One of the distinctive elements of Johnson’s literary criti-cism is his regular inclusion of ethical/moral value judgements: he is often referred to as the great moralist. Present-day critics, however, avoid value judgements since most of the literature examined by academic or profes-sional critics is assumed to be part of what F. R. Leavis called the “great tradition,” not requiring justification. But recently, attention to female, feminist, and minority literature has led to the modification and alteration of the canon. For this reason, the function of value judgements in criti-cism is as important now as it was in Johnson’s day when the profession was just coming into its own. Although Johnson often uses the terms ethics and morality inter-changeably, his literary value judgements are seldom moral. For instance, he defends Milton’s Satan against the accusation of blasphemy but asserts that Paradise Lost lacks “human interest,” that is, connection to the life of the ordinary person. Similarly, Johnson attacks many metaphys-ical poems for deliberate obscurity, an elitist neglect of common human interest. Samuel Garth’s “The Dispensary” is characterized as “mediocre” for pretentious erudition that distracts from the purpose of the satire. Pope and Swift are criticized for participating in their daily social life in what they satirize in their writing. And Gray is seen as a recluse who remains apart from “the passing world.” These value judgements focus upon social responsibility. Not so much moral matters of right and wrong, they are more accurately characterized as ethical, that is, not viola-tions of “virtue” or the law, but of social mores or norms, often, in a literary-critical context, lack of consideration for the general reader. A typical example of ethical judgement appeared in a recent Observer article: “London is full of smart lawyers and some of them work for the Russians on avoiding sanctions... the work might be legally permissible but is unethical.”2 Whatever the good life is, for Johnson it is markedly social. Given the shrinking resources of the world, we cannot expect our discipline or any others of the humanities to continue to be subsidised and supported unless we demonstrate how we contribute to the good life. My argument is that the Lives of the Poets documents the ethical function of poetry in our culture. Samuel Johnson uses moral literary criticism to analyse poetry. I use Ralph Cohen’s genre methodology to convert Johnson’s moral commentary to ethical literary criticism.

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Ketersediaan

Informasi Detail

Judul Seri

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No. Panggil

928.21 TOM s

Penerbit

Switzerland : Springer Nature., 2024

Deskripsi Fisik

177 hlm

Bahasa

English

ISBN/ISSN

9783031618420

Klasifikasi

928.21

Tipe Isi

text

Tipe Media

computer

Tipe Pembawa

online resource

Edisi

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Subjek

Person in Literature Biography

Info Detail Spesifik

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Pernyataan Tanggungjawab

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Versi lain/terkait

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