Samuel Johnson's "general Nature": Tradition and Transition in Eighteenth-century DiscourseUniversity of Delaware Press, 1999 - 168 pages This study illuminates the importance and meaning of the term author in eighteenth-century discourse from the perspective of its prominent usage by Samuel Johnson. It explains Johnson's employment of nature in his periodical essays, his qualified endorsement of the new science, and his commendation of Shakespeare's drama and other literary works on the basis of their just representation of general nature. |
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... contains . The medieval origination of the " nature " of Renaissance and eighteenth - century humanism in the assimilation of the Greek phi- losophers ' concept of phusis with Christian theology is the subject of chapter 2. The roots of ...
... contains . The medieval origination of the " nature " of Renaissance and eighteenth - century humanism in the assimilation of the Greek phi- losophers ' concept of phusis with Christian theology is the subject of chapter 2. The roots of ...
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Contents
9 | |
11 | |
Classical Nature | 21 |
Medieval Nature | 36 |
Nature in EighteenthCentury Discourse | 49 |
Nature and Value in the Rambler Idler and Adventurer | 71 |
Johnson on the Experimental Philosophy | 88 |
Representation Imagination and Nature in Johnsons Literary Criticism | 108 |
Johnson and EighteenthCentury Reductionism | 130 |
Notes | 138 |
Selected Bibliography | 156 |
Index | 163 |
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Common terms and phrases
Alan of Lille Alexander Pope Aquinas Aristotelian Aristotle assertion Boerhaave Boerhaave's Boyle Boyle's Callicles century Christian cited parenthetically Clarendon Press classical nature complexity conception of nature consists constitutes context creation Cudworth defined definition deism Descartes divine edition eighteenth eighteenth-century discourse eighteenth-century nature emphasized empiricism endorsement Epicurus epistemological Essay evil exemplified existence explanation fiction further citations further quotations genius Hume Hume's ideas Idler images imagination implies important inherent intellectual interpretation Jenyns Jenyns's John Johnson's commendation Johnson's conception Johnson's criticism Johnson's nature knowledge laws literary Malebranche material meaning medieval metaphysical nature mind moral realism natural philosophy nature's Newton Oxford philosophical phusis physical Plato poet poetry Pope Pope's Preface presumption principles Rambler rational reality reason reductionism relation representation represented Samuel Johnson scientific Shakespeare skepticism Stoic Summa theologica supplied parenthetically teleological theological things Thomist tion tradition truth ture ultimate University Press virtue York
Popular passages
Page 82 - All Nature is but Art, unknown to thee; All Chance, Direction, which thou canst not see; All Discord, Harmony not understood; All partial Evil, universal Good : And, in spite of Pride, in erring Reason's spite, One truth is clear, Whatever is, is right.
Page 117 - Their attempts were always analytic; they broke every image into fragments: and could no more represent, by their slender conceits and laboured particularities, the prospects of nature or the scenes of life, than he who dissects a sunbeam with a prism can exhibit the wide effulgence of a summer noon.
Page 67 - A perfect judge will read each work of wit With the same spirit that its author writ : Survey the whole, nor seek slight faults to find Where Nature moves, and rapture warms the mind ; Nor lose, for that malignant dull delight, The gen'rous pleasure to be charm'd with wit.
Page 104 - That not to know at large of things remote From use, obscure and subtle, but to know That which before us lies in daily life, Is the prime wisdom...
Page 132 - ... things that are immediately perceived by sense, call them what you will: but they do not inform us that things exist without the mind, or unperceived, like to those which are perceived. This the materialists themselves acknowledge. It remains therefore that if we have any knowledge at all of external things, it must be by reason, inferring their existence from what is immediately perceived by sense.
Page 52 - The general and perpetual voice of men is as the sentence of God himself. For that which all men have at all times learned, Nature herself must needs have taught; and God being the author of Nature, her voice is but his instrument.
Page 62 - SINCE the mind, in all its thoughts and reasonings, hath no other immediate object but its own ideas, which it alone does or can contemplate ; it is evident, that our knowledge is only conversant about them.
Page 66 - First follow Nature, and your judgment frame By her just standard, which is still the same: Unerring Nature! still divinely bright, One clear...