Designing the Life of Johnson

The Lyell Lectures, 2001-2
Erscheinungsjahr 2002
ISBN: 978-0-19-818739-4
Verlag: Oxford University Press

Buch, Englisch, 198 Seiten, Print PDF, Format (B × H): 144 mm x 223 mm, Gewicht: 377 g

For over two centuries Boswell's massive biography of Samuel Johnson has been both reverenced and reviled. Yet neither its admirers nor its critics have fully understood how the book was designed to work upon them. Boswell himself is partly to blame: throughout the Life he directs attention away from artistry to industry, from creative choices to dedicated researches. Yet his working manuscript, one of the twentieth century's greatest literary discoveries, tells a much different tale. Designing the Life of Johnson, the first study of its kind, reconstructs Boswell's models and methods by charting this textual labyrinth. It begins by analysing the stages that led to the first edition, goes on to reveal the impact of portrait and theatre-piece upon the structure of the Life, and ends by uncovering the transformation of Johnson from savage into sage. The result is a more subtle, more vital assessment of Boswell the designer - and an enhanced awareness of biography's power to make life into art.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Redford, Bruce

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Literaturgeschichte und Literaturkritik

Inhaltsverzeichnis

- Cue Titles and Textual Note

- Introduction

- 1: Imprinting Johnson

- 2: Representing Johnson

- 3: Dramatizing Johnson

- 4: Transmitting Johnson

- 5: Taming Johnson

- Select Bibliography

- Index

Über Autor(innen)

Editor of the OUP/Princeton UP 5-volume edition of the Letters of Samuel Johnson, 1992-4; now editor of the Yale UP/Edinburgh UP edition of Boswell's Life of Johnson: An Edition of the Original Manuscript (vol. 2)