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Samuel Johnson (1709–84) is the key figure in eighteenth-century English literature and culture. He is both a representative of the English fusion of Neoclassicism and empiricism, and a singular figure in literary history. The „great cham“ (T. Smollett) of literature started his career as a neoclassicist essayist, satirical poet, and versatile biographer. He moved on to produce his own periodical journals, a Dictionary of the English Language (1755), compiled with the help of a few assistants only, a novel, an edition of Shakespeare (1765), to conclude his career with his momentous Lives of the Poets (1779–81). This collective biography was an attempt to canonize his view of English literary history against the onslaught of Romanticism, a project which was outmoded at the time of its publication. Covering a wide range of Johnsonian writings as well as his contemporary reception, the module is designed to study Johnson in the context of eighteenth-century English literature, poetics, and culture. The Lektürekurs will provide room for the in-depth study of theory and criticism pertaining to Johnson and eighteenth-century culture.A reader will be provided by the beginning of term (available from the Copy shop Georgenstr.). |
