ENG 6338 The Age of Johnson
Considers the achievement of Samuel Johnson and the influence of both his life and his art within the milieu of late eighteenth-century Britain. Approaches Johnson within the many literary roles which he practiced and helped to invent, including moral essayist and fabulist, biographer, lexicographer, literary critic, polemicist, poet, conversationalist, and travel writer. Compares his achievement in these genres with that of the contemporaries whom he aided, inspired, and debated, including Boswell, Burke, Gibbon, Goldsmith, and Fanny Burney.