Johnson's Milton [Hardcover]

A detailed analysis of Johnson's complicated and controversial attitude to Milton in the context of eighteenth-century literary criticism.Johnson's Milton explores the response of one great English literary figure, Samuel Johnson, to another, John Milton. Combining close analysis of Johnson's allusion to Milton with an account of Johnson's complicated and controversial attitude to Milton, this innovative book is an important contribution to the study of both writers.Johnson's Milton explores the response of one great English literary figure, Samuel Johnson, to another, John Milton. Combining close analysis of Johnson's allusion to Milton with an account of Johnson's complicated and controversial attitude to Milton, this innovative book is an important contribution to the study of both writers.Samuel Johnson is often represented as primarily antagonistic or antipathetic to Milton. Yet his imaginative and intellectual engagement with Milton's life and writing extended across the entire span of his own varied writing career. As essayist, poet, lexicographer, critic and biographer  above all as reader  Johnson developed a controversial, fascinating and productive literary relationship with his powerful predecessor. To understand how Johnson creatively appropriates Milton's texts, how he critically challenges yet also confirms Milton's status, and how he constructs him as a biographical subject, is to deepen the modern reader's understanding of both writers in the context of historical continuity and change. Christine Rees's insightful study will be of interest not only to Milton and Johnson specialists, but to all scholars of early modern literary history and biography.Introduction: Johnson and Milton; Part I. Johnson the Reader/Writer: Appropriating Milton's Texts: 1. Summoning Milton's ghost: Miltonic allusion in the periodical essays; 2. 'No Miltonian fire'? Miltonic allusion in Johnson's poetry; 3. Rasselas: a rewriting of Paradise Lost?; 4. 'Licence they mean whel“+