Johnson, Writing, and Memory
Format:Paperback
Publisher:Cambridge University Press
Published:3rd Nov '05
Currently unavailable, and unfortunately no date known when it will be back
Examines Johnson's writing in relation to eighteenth-century thought on literature, history, fiction and law.
Greg Clingham examines Johnson's writing, including his biographical writing, as it intersects with eighteenth-century thought on literature, history, fiction and law and in its subsequent compatibility with and resistance to modern theory. Clingham offers a theoretically nuanced and original account of Johnson's work.Johnson, Writing, and Memory demonstrates the importance of memory in Samuel Johnson's oeuvre. Greg Clingham argues that this is a notion of memory that is derived from the process of historical and creative writing, and is found to be embodied in works of literature and other cultural forms. He examines Johnson's writing, including his biographical writing, as it intersects with eighteenth-century thought on literature, history, fiction and law and in its subsequent compatibility with and resistance to modern theory. Clingham's widely researched study provides an account of Johnson's intellectual positions that incorporates the challenges they pose to recent critical theory, and argues for Johnson's inclusion in a new theorisation of terms such as 'authority', 'nature' and 'memory'. Clingham does this work of intellectual abstraction while remaining focused in the concrete realities of Johnson's writing itself, offering a theoretically nuanced and original account of Johnson's work.
'This is a wide-ranging, intelligent study … an authoritative contribution to Johnson scholarship, which suggests how his works may benefit from more theoretical reading.' The Times Literary Supplement
'… probingly intellectual'. British Association for Romantic Studies
ISBN: 9780521021852
Dimensions: 229mm x 152mm x 14mm
Weight: 374g
236 pages