...John Robert Moore © 1954 University of Washington 1954 RASSELAS AND THE EARLY TRAVELERS TO ABYSSINIA By JOHN ROBERTMOORE When Lord Beaconsfield exulted that by an expedition to Abyssinia...

...Patrick O'Flaherty Copyright © 1970 by Duke University Press 1970 DR. JOHNSON AS EQUIVOCATOR THE MEANING OF RASSELAS By PATRICKO’FLAHERTY Biographers have long recognized that the death of Sarah Johnson...

... related topics. There are three main parts to the study. The first chapter is on Johnson as theorist and critic of fiction. Then, the bulk of the book, there are four chapters on the fiction in the periodicals: the theme of “the choice of life,” as it appears in Johnson before Rasselas; Johnson...

... entry into the language. Hazlitt called Rasselas “the most melancholy and debilitating moral speculation that ever was put forth and guessed that this was because Johnson, “doubtful of the faculties of his mind, as of his organs of vi- sion, . . . trusted only to his feelings and fears” (VIII...

... seems to deserve our considera- tion. For just as Rasselas represents the seeking Johnson3 and as Imlac, the guide and philosopher, represents him in an ethical sense, so the astronomer represents Johnson as a suffering neurotic. Readers easily recall the “morals” which are pointed...

... by issue number, are from The Yale Edition of the Works of Samuel Johnson, II-V, ed. W. J. Bate et al. (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1963, 1969). Quotations from Rasselas are from the edition by Geoffrey Tillotson and Brian Jenkins (London: Oxford University Press, 197 I...

... on the radar screen. A pivotal moment in Rasselas occurs when the hero wakes to consciousness by comparing his situation in the Happy Valley to that of the animals and concludes that, while he has the same appetites that they do, he does not have the same satisfaction...

... on the inconsistencies of Rasselas (including the over- riding inconsistency of Johnson’s having written an Oriental tale at all); Mary Lascelles on Scott’s revisions of Wandering Willie’s Tale (Scott had his own imaginative kind of care as reviser); above all, Kathleen Tillotson on ncw readings in Dombey...

... in that. But surely the centerpiece will be the Decline and Fall. In fact, no. Gib- bon turns up now and again-but incidentally, to point a moral or adorn the tale. Goldstein’s subject is not Gibbon or even, say, Dryden; his texts are not “Windsor Forest” or Rasselas (a few passing references to each...

... will be the Decline and Fall. In fact, no. Gib- bon turns up now and again-but incidentally, to point a moral or adorn the tale. Goldstein’s subject is not Gibbon or even, say, Dryden; his texts are not “Windsor Forest” or Rasselas (a few passing references to each); instead he writes of Dyer’s Ruins...

..., and Anna Laetitia Bar- bauld” gives short shrift to Milton and Pope. Nominally comparing Samuel Johnson’s Rasselas with the tale’s continuation by Ellis Cornelia Knight, Messenger barely acknowledges the intricacy of Johnson’s achievement. More egregious still is “Arabella Fernior, 1714...

... of man, and his reli- gion. Paul Kent Alkon draws abundantly from Johnson’s works, especially Rasselas, the essays, and the Dictionary. Though many of the quotations have a familiar ring, they bear repetition. Unlike various other specialized studies, this one is not based on a narrow thesis...

... of the nature of man, and his reli- gion. Paul Kent Alkon draws abundantly from Johnson’s works, especially Rasselas, the essays, and the Dictionary. Though many of the quotations have a familiar ring, they bear repetition. Unlike various other specialized studies, this one is not based on a narrow...

... of “the choice of life,” as it appears in Johnson before Rasselas; Johnson as satirist; Johnson as writer of oriental tales and allegories; and something of the history of fiction ...

... to compassion” (p. 138);Johnson “assesses and judges firmly, but he is unable to remain a detached observer” (p. 145). Kadner’s conclusions, while sensi- ble, are unsurprising. More disappointing is Edward Tomarken’s “Travels into the Unknown: Rasselas and A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland...

... with which Sterne treats the quest for the happy life in these sermons. Tristram Shandy, Rasselas, and Candide were all first published in 1759, and all three share a fundamental skepticism of what Rasselas was fond of calling “the choice of life.” As with Swift, the root of this skepticism...

... and Lauder”; Gwin J. Kolb, “The Intellectual Background of the Discourse on the Soul in Rasselas”; Frederick W. Hilles, “Dr. Johnson on Swift’s Last Years: Some Misconceptions and Distortions”; Robert Scholes, “Dr. Johnson and Jane Austen”; Martin Price, “The Inquisition of Truth...

.... Rawson, “Gulliver and the Gentle Reader”; Frederick W. Hilles, “Art and Artifice in Tom Jones”; W. K. Wimsatt, “In Praise of Rasselas: Four Notes (Converging Mary Lascelles, “Scott and the Art of Revision”; Bonamy Dobree, “Robert Smith Surtees”; Kathleen Tillot- son, “New...

... that the author intermittently investigates. But her treatment of literary texts seems often careless, skewed, or arbitrary. Careless: the mad astronomer in Rasselas, driven to insanity by his conviction that he controls the weather, appears here as an “astrologer who violates mortal limits by foreseeing...

.... Careless: the mad astronomer in Rasselas, driven to insanity by his conviction that he controls the weather, appears here as an “astrologer who violates mortal limits by foreseeing the future and thus oversteps his own nature into madness” (187). The familiar eighteenth-century typographic convention...