Write a note on Boswell technique in his "Life of Johnson".

Write a note on Boswell technique in his "Life of Johnson".

Or

Discuss some prominent features of Boswell's biographical art.

Or

Examine the biographical techniques used by Boswell in Life of Johnson.

The biographical techniques used by Boswell in Life of Johnson are:

Birth and Early Childhood: Boswell's narration of Johnson's family background is worth noticing in this paragraph. Boswell maintains that Johnson's father did not come from a well-to-do or known family.

The title of Gentleman, Boswell tells his readers, was 'taken by those who could not boast of gentility'. His mother on the other hand came from a well-known family of small landowners. Boswell, no matter how appreciative of Johnson, was a biographer, who wished to enable his readers to see the man described and discussed in the life, and not a panegyrist. He was in a way, following Johnson's precept. 'He that narrates,' wrote Johnson in Idler No. 84, 'the life of another..... shows his favourite at a distance, decorated and magnified like the ancient actors in their tragic dress and endeavours to hide the man that he may produce a hero!' Boswell tried to project the man. There is also an emphasis on 'never' in the first paragraph. It gives a hint of the amount of research and interviews Boswell conducted in order to arrive at definite facts on the life of Johnson. In the second and third paragraphs, Boswell tried to establish the precise nature of Johnson's precocity (prematurely developed in some faculty).

 Lord Chesterfield's Neglect: Boswell takes a lot of pain to discover the true story about Johnson's break with Chesterfield. He tells us about the testimony of Lord Lyttelton that palliates the act of Chesterfield to some extent.

He narrates the manner in which he got a copy of the letter Johnson wrote to Chesterfield and having given the letter he tells us what one of his eminent contemporaries William Warburton thought about Johnson. Boswell's biography is interesting and useful not only because he tries to tell us the true story objectively but also because he draws inferences from the events described. For example, in 'Birth and Early Childhood' Boswell said that he would endeavor to record the 'various excellences' of Johnson's character. It is this effort to record the qualities of man and of course, his shortcomings that is of central importance to the readers. We may point out that there is a letter of Johnson quoted in full in this section. It is so perfectly worded that it has been committed to memory by many. Historians have pointed out that this letter signals the end of the system of patronage in England. Boswell painstakingly collected all the letters of Johnson he could and incorporated them into his Life. This set the trend in the nineteenth century, of writing the two-volume Life and Letters of 171 so and so. Johnsons and Paoli: One of the strengths of Boswell's Life is his reports of meetings and conversation of Johnson with or about the other eminent people of the age and many a time also with people not so well known.

In the short space of the first paragraph, Boswell describes Johnson's views on language, disloyalty of husband and wife towards one another, courage and fear that he expressed before Paoli. In the second paragraph, Johnson discusses good breeding and free will and pre-determination with Boswell. In the west very frequently and sometimes in India as well religious people wish to know to what extent human beings are free to take moral decisions in their lives and fulfil those and to what extent they are pre-planned for specific actions and functions by God. Orthodox Christians believe that we are free unlike animals and Johnson's holds the same point of view.