Discuss Boswell's Life of Johnson as a piece of art. |BEGE 105| Ignou Notes By Student Help | ignounotesbystudenthelp |

Discuss Boswell's Life of Johnson as a piece of art.

Or 

What impression do we gather of Samuel Johnson from Boswells "Life of Johnson"? 

Or

 Discuss some important features of Boswell's art of writing biography.

Biography is often defined as an account of a person's life and a branch of history.

 In Boswell's own time there were at least four others who wro Johnson's life, i.e. Mrs. Piozzi, John Hawkins, William Shaw and Arthur Murphy. Many others have written since then and Johnson is still popular as a subject of biography. C.L. Reade, Joseph Wood Krutch, James L. Clifford and lohn Wain have written Johnson's life in this century and the need for another life of Johnson is still felt and Donald Greene is writing one another Notwithstanding this, Boswell's Life of Johnson is still read and edited, despite its voluminous size. James Boswell's The life of Samuel Johnson' is perhaps the best-known biography in English literature and it marked a turning point in the art of biography writing. Boswell's Life of Johnson is a piece of art. In spite of the fact that the arrangement of the material is chronological rather than topicwise, there is a unity of design. This unity is given to the work by Boswell's respect for the penetrating wisdom of the man that Johnson was, his piety, his courage, his wit, his learning, his sympathy for the oppressed, the weak and the poor. 

It is often said that Boswell kept notes on Johnson's conversations. This is true but the way he recorded just the essence of a talk and not the chaff of the trivialities that often go on in company makes Boswell's biography Paoli and Johnson. Boswell was there on that occasion but there is no mention of him saying anything. Possibly because he wanted to maintain an artistic distance. Hence, it is in his selection of material that Boswell employed his artistic talent. Related to this is the issue of authenticity. Modern scholarship, through its comparison of the accounts of incidents related in the biography with those in the notes or the journals of Boswell and reports of others present on the occasions shows that Johnson was absolutely faithful in reporting the words of different persons. It is in condensation that Boswell exercised his artistic manipulation. so effective. For example, Boswell's report of the meeting of  Sir Harold Nicolson has pointed out that Boswell's artistic talent lay in 'projecting his detached photograph with such continuity and speed that the effect produced is that of motion and of life. There is both narrative speed and descriptive force in Johnson's biography. The reader not only follows the narrative or a philosophical discussion but also see Lucy Porter talking to Johnson and Boswell in a homely setting and Johnson and Paoli in a very formal one. The reader feels the hurt pride of Samuel Johnson as he hits back Chesterfield in his reply tension of October 10, 1769 in Boswell's mind when Paoli paid Johnson a visit. These are made possible by Boswell's peculiar abilities of description and narration, analysis, exposition and intuitive understanding of his subject's mind. Boswell was also revolutionary in portraying his material in dramatic scenes, in contrast, for example, to Johnson's own 'Lives' of the Poets', which are presented as judgemental commentaries. Boswell has combined the mimetic skill of the novelist with the accuracy of the diarist and has been called the first 'mimetic biographer'. to him.

 The reader also lives the James L. Clifford suggested that Boswell constantly tried to make his expression precise and suggestive of colour and charm. For instance, 'loved and caressed by everybody' of the notes become, 'caressed and loved by all about him', 'remarkably lively and gay and very happy' became 'a gay and frolicsome fellow'. Thus, we find that the power of Boswell's Life of Johnson is a result of a variety of talents Boswell possessed painstaking research, accurate description, honest narration, an imaginative understanding of the subject and a command over the English language.

Write a short note on the life of Samuel Johnson. | Ignou | BEGE 105| | Ignou Notes By Student Help |

Write a short note on the life of Samuel Johnson.

                     

BEGE-105 Understanding Prose

Samuel Johnson has been called the symbol of the genius of England.

Strong common sense, learning, wit, courage, honesty and sympathy are some of the qualities that people admire wherever we find them but we find all these together in any one person so rarely Johnson was born into a family of average means. His father Michael was a bookseller. 

He was also a learned man and his philosophical nature rather interfered with his trade and prosperity.

His mother, Sarah came Birmingham family of Fords who were well-to-do. She was not much educated but feared that their economic condition was getting worse.

 The result was that there was not much peace in the family. Johnson had a younger brother, called Nathaniel, He committed suicide in 1737 and within a few days Johnson too moved to London, in search of a job. There he entered the service of Edward Cave (1691-1754) the printer and wrote for The Gentleman's Magazine. Johnson had to give up his studies at Oxford in 1729 for financial reasons. In his search of employment he went, among other places, to Birmingham. There he wrote essays for the Birmingham Journal and translated Jeronymo Lobo's French version of Voyage to Abyssinia into English. Apparently, during his stay at Birmingham, Johnson also met Elizabeth Porter, wife of the draper Harry Porter.

After the death of her husband, Johnson married Elizabeth who had a son as old as Johnson himself. She was 20 years older than him. With the help of the dowry she brought, Johnson opened a school at Edial. One of its students, David Garrick, became eminent in the theatre and Johnson's lifelong friend. However, the attempt was unsuccessful and the school had to be closed.  One of the works that built Johnson's reputation was his Dictionary of the English Language (1755) in which he defined over 40,000 words, illustrating them with the help of 1,14,000 quotations.

These were drawn from books in every branch of knowledge written since the time of Sir Philip Sidney (1563-1626). Nathaniel Bailey had preceded Johnson in the task but Johnson's was so much superior to Bailey's that the latter was soon wiped out of public memory.

 However, there are many words in the dictionary to which Johnson attached indefensible meanings either in sport or petulance. Some of these were not of this class. 'Pastern' Johnson defined as 'the knee of a horse.' When a lady asked him how he came to do that, he replied with admirable frankness, Ignorance, Madam, pure ignorance. There are some other definitions that are commonly remembered.

Lexicographer given to a state hireling for treason to his country. These, however, are no specimens of the precision of the definitions of words in the Dictionary Apart from the journalism for the Magazine, Johnson wrote many short lives of eminent and not so eminent men. In all he wrote about 70 of them. In Rambler, No. 60 (Oct. 13, 1750) he wrote: "I have often thought that there has rarely passed a life of which a was defined as 'a harmless drudge' and pension 'a pay nt judicious and faithful narrative would not be useful. For not only every   man has in the mighty mass of the world, great numbers in the same condition with himself to whom his mistake and miscarriage, escapes and expedients, would be of immediate and apparent use.

However, there is such an uniformity in the state of man, considered apart from adventitious and separable decorations and disguises, that there is scarce any possibility of good or ill, but is common to human kind." In short, biographies are more useful to us than other branches of literature because from them we learn about the merits and shortcomings and their effect on the lives of certain people, which can be examples for to imitate or avoid. Johnson preferred autobiographies to biographies because the former could convey the truth better.