Since the first appearance of Samuel Johnson's edition of
Shakespeare's drama in 1765, its Preface has often been published
separately, while the Notes have been treated as miscellaneous and
fragmentary. As a result, few modern readers realize that the Notes
in fact contain coherent interpretations of most of the plays and
that many portions of the Preface are generalizations related to
those readings. Scholars who have examined the Notes carefully have
almost always used them in studies of larger issues, such as
Johnson's morality or rhetoric. In this book, Edward Tomarken
provides the first full-length study of the Notes to Shakespeare,
showing how they raise issues of direct concern to modern critics
and theoreticians.
While referring to Johnson's notes on all the Shakespearean
dramas, Tomarken focuses on eight plays--Henry IV, Troilus and
Cressida, Twelfth Night, The Taming of the Shrew, King Lear, The
Tempest, Hamlet, and Macbeth--to demonstrate the range of Johnson's
editorial and critical abilities. Each chapter, devoted to a single
play, moves from the particular to the general-from specific
remarks about the play in the Notes, to related theoretical
statements in the Preface, and finally to an axiom of literary
theory. Ranging from a formulation concerning ideology in criticism
to a reconsideration of aesthetic empathy, these axioms are,
Tomarken contends, essential to literary criticism as a discipline
and manifest Johnson's relevance to modern criticism.
The conception of criticism that emerges in this book goes well
beyond the theoretical premises of the eighteenth century. Tomarken
submits that the ethical dimension of criticism-the moral aspect so
fundamental to Johnson but so foreign to modern critics-can point
to a way of mediating between the ideological differences that have
become so divisive in modern criticism and theory.
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