Rasselas: More Notes
From T’s class:
Johnson has a curious status for a canonical figure; he is known more as a subject of writing (Boswell’s biography) than as a writer himself. He is the first literary figure with a character, personality and a lot of information about his daily life exists. Johnson represents the idea of a life of writing.
Johnson was very troubled by his religion; he had a highly-developed fear of God. He was also scared of going mad, of having his imagination take over.
He is also admired for his prose style, which is very latinate and very balanced.
Despite his aggression in conversation, Johnson was very compassionate. He used what little money he had supporting the misfits of society: alcoholics, beggards, the blind, etc.
The characters in Rasselas, though they come off as mouthpieces, are all imbued with a psychological anxiety. Rasselas says “give me something to desire.”
Rasselas was composed in a week to defray the cost of Johnson’s mother’s funeral.
It’s a remarkably symmetrical text; 16 chapters in the happy valley, 16 chapters of active searching, 16 chapters of passive searching.
The only time when the characters don’t have that anxiety is when they care for the astronomer; they form a community, do work and care for each other. Though it’s not terribly obvious, that moral is buried in Rasselas.
Rasselas achieves that moment of stasis and contentment in teh astronomer section, but it is passed right over; that isn’t the end of the story.
Johnson resists the age of commercialism and advertising that is starting. Wanting things, hoping and dreaming are all bad things. They make you unhappy.
Johnson is decidedly un-modern; he exists close enough to see it and loathe it.
Don Quixote goes from being a broadly comic text to a tragic text in the English perception. Quixote himself goes from being a fool to being an idealist.
Both Quixote and Rasselas are tales of naivete. The pattern that Johnson is using comes from Paradise Lost (fall from a world of innocence into a world of death and disease, etc.), but it has the Quixotic element as well. 18th-century satire is built on the idea of the innocent who stumbles into the world of violence. Evelina does the same thing, so does Candide.
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