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139-410: Irony , in its broadest sense, is the juxtaposition of what appears to be the case on the surface and what is actually the case or to be expected. It typically figures as a rhetorical device and literary technique . In some philosophical contexts, however, it takes on a larger significance as an entire way of life. Irony has been defined in many different ways, and there is no general agreement about

278-432: A x {\displaystyle ax} denotes the product of a {\displaystyle a} with x {\displaystyle x} , or a {\displaystyle a} times x {\displaystyle x} . It is also used for scalar multiplication , matrix multiplication , function composition , and logical and . In numeral systems , juxtaposition of digits has

417-549: A broadsword while wearing Scottish garb, or dancing a Highland jig. In the 1770s, Johnson, who had tended to be an opponent of the government early in life, published a series of pamphlets in favour of various government policies. In 1770 he produced The False Alarm , a political pamphlet attacking John Wilkes . In 1771, his Thoughts on the Late Transactions Respecting Falkland's Islands cautioned against war with Spain. In 1774 he printed The Patriot ,

556-412: A "reciprocal play ( Wechselspiel ) between the infinite and the finite", it is "the pulse and alternation between universality and individuality"—no matter how the contrasting pairs may be articulated. In this way, according to Schlegel, irony captures the human situation of always striving towards, but never completely possessing, what is infinite or true. This presentation of Schlegel's account of irony

695-526: A Pembroke tutor, and is the earliest surviving publication of any of Johnson's writings. Johnson spent the rest of his time studying, even during the Christmas holiday. He drafted a "plan of study" called "Adversaria", which he left unfinished, and used his time to learn French while working on his Greek. Johnson's tutor, Jorden, left Pembroke some months after Johnson's arrival, and was replaced by William Adams . Johnson enjoyed Adams's tutoring, but by December,

834-413: A chain he would wear the rest of his life. When Johnson was three, his brother Nathaniel was born. In a letter he wrote to his mother, Nathaniel complained that Johnson "would scarcely ever use me with common civility." With the birth of Johnson's brother their father was unable to pay the debts he had accrued over the years, and the family was no longer able to maintain its standard of living. When he

973-669: A child, and his parents, to his later disgust, would show off his "newly acquired accomplishments". His education began at the age of three, and was provided by his mother, who had him memorise and recite passages from the Book of Common Prayer . When Samuel turned four, he was sent to a nearby school, and, at the age of six he was sent to a retired shoemaker to continue his education. A year later Johnson went to Lichfield Grammar School , where he excelled in Latin. For his most personal poems, Johnson used Latin. During this time, Johnson started to exhibit

1112-403: A complete list". In May 1738 his first major work, the poem London , was published anonymously. Based on Juvenal 's Satire III , it describes the character Thales leaving for Wales to escape the problems of London, which is portrayed as a place of crime, corruption, and poverty. Johnson could not bring himself to regard the poem as earning him any merit as a poet. Alexander Pope said that

1251-490: A concept of irony that is not a mere "artistic playfulness", but a "conscious form of literary creation", typically involving the "consistent alternation of affirmation and negation". No longer just a rhetorical device, on their conception, it refers to an entire metaphysical stance on the world. It is commonplace to begin a study of irony with the acknowledgement that the term quite simply eludes any single definition. Philosopher Richard J. Bernstein opens his Ironic Life with

1390-445: A copious but a miserably ragged one, and all such as he could borrow; which latter, if ever they came back to those that lent them, were so defaced as to be scarce worth owning." Johnson's process included underlining words in the numerous books he wanted to include in his Dictionary . The assistants would copy out the underlined sentences on individual paper slips, which would later be alphabetized and accompanied with examples. Johnson

1529-496: A critique of what he viewed as false patriotism. On the evening of 7 April 1775, he made the famous statement, "Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel." This line was not, as widely believed, about patriotism in general, but what Johnson considered to be the false use of the term "patriotism" by Wilkes and his supporters. Johnson opposed "self-professed Patriots" in general, but valued what he considered "true" patriotism. The last of these pamphlets, Taxation No Tyranny (1775),

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1668-456: A degree, his application was passed over on 6 September 1731. At about this time, Johnson's father became ill and developed an "inflammatory fever" which led to his death in December 1731 when Johnson was twenty-two. Devastated by his father's death, Johnson sought to atone for an occasion he did not go with his father to sell books. Johnson stood for a "considerable time bareheaded in the rain" in

1807-453: A failed cataract surgery. Williams, in turn, became Johnson's housekeeper. To occupy himself, Johnson began to work on The Literary Magazine, or Universal Review , the first issue of which was printed on 19 March 1756. Philosophical disagreements erupted over the purpose of the publication when the Seven Years' War began and Johnson started to write polemical essays attacking the war. After

1946-451: A few more were added in subsequent editions, and it sold for the extravagant price of £4 10s, perhaps the rough equivalent of £350 today. An important innovation in English lexicography was to illustrate the meanings of his words by literary quotation, of which there were approximately 114,000. The authors most frequently cited include William Shakespeare , John Milton and John Dryden . It

2085-432: A few volumes of his Shakespeare to prove his commitment to the project. In 1758, Johnson began to write a weekly series, The Idler , which ran from 15 April 1758 to 5 April 1760, as a way to avoid finishing his Shakespeare . This series was shorter and lacked many features of The Rambler . Unlike his independent publication of The Rambler , The Idler was published in a weekly news journal The Universal Chronicle ,

2224-462: A freed slave, Francis Barber , as his servant. Johnson's work on The Plays of William Shakespeare took up most of his time. On 8 June 1756, Johnson published his Proposals for Printing, by Subscription, the Dramatick Works of William Shakespeare , which argued that previous editions of Shakespeare were edited incorrectly and needed to be corrected. Johnson's progress on the work slowed as

2363-496: A friend and biographer of Johnson, claims that "the first advances probably proceeded from her, as her attachment to Johnson was in opposition to the advice and desire of all her relations," Johnson was inexperienced in such relationships, but the well-to-do widow encouraged him and promised to provide for him with her substantial savings. They married on 9 July 1735, at St Werburgh's Church in Derby . The Porter family did not approve of

2502-560: A friend and fellow student at the college, offered to make up the deficit. Johnson made friends at Pembroke and read much. His tutor asked him to produce a Latin translation of Alexander Pope 's Messiah as a Christmas exercise. Johnson completed half of the translation in one afternoon and the rest the following morning. Although the poem brought him praise, it did not bring the material benefit he had hoped for. The poem later appeared in Miscellany of Poems (1731), edited by John Husbands,

2641-523: A genuine mode of ethical passion . For Kierkegaard himself, this took the form of religious inwardness. What is crucial, however, is just to in some way move beyond the purely (or merely) ironic. Irony is what creates the space in which we can learn and meaningfully choose how to live a life worthy ( vita digna ) of being called human. Referring to earlier self-conscious works such as Don Quixote and Tristram Shandy , D. C. Muecke points particularly to Peter Weiss 's 1964 play, Marat/Sade . This work

2780-419: A group of words that are listed together. Thus, where English uses the conjunction and (e.g. mother and father ), many languages use simple juxtaposition ("mother father"). In logic , juxtaposition is a logical fallacy on the part of the observer, where two items placed next to each other imply a correlation, when none is actually claimed. For example, an illustration of a politician and Adolf Hitler on

2919-496: A history of Latin poetry from Petrarch to Poliziano; a Proposal was soon printed, but a lack of funds halted the project. Johnson remained with his close friend Harry Porter during a terminal illness, which ended in Porter's death on 3 September 1734. Porter's wife Elizabeth (née Jervis) (otherwise known as "Tetty") was now a widow at the age of 45, with three children. Some months later, Johnson began to court her. William Shaw ,

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3058-458: A little heat like what is produced by touching ice." The show eventually ran for nine nights. Tetty Johnson was ill during most of her time in London, and in 1752 she decided to return to the countryside while Johnson was busy working on his Dictionary . She died on 17 March 1752, and, at word of her death, Johnson wrote a letter to his old friend Taylor, which according to Taylor "expressed grief in

3197-458: A new sense of "an intended simulation which the audience or hearer was meant to recognise". More simply put, it came to acquire the general definition, "the expression of one's meaning by using language that normally signifies the opposite, typically for humorous or emphatic effect". Until the Renaissance , the Latin ironia was considered a part of rhetoric, usually a species of allegory , along

3336-416: A patron, my lord, one who looks with unconcern on a man struggling for life in the water, and when he has reached ground, encumbers him with help? The notice which you have been pleased to take of my labours, had it been early, had been kind: but it has been delayed till I am indifferent and cannot enjoy it; till I am solitary and cannot impart it; till I am known and do not want it." Chesterfield, impressed by

3475-497: A political agenda or support various officials, he was told by Bute that the pension "is not given you for anything you are to do, but for what you have done". On 16 May 1763, Johnson first met 22-year-old James Boswell —who would later become Johnson's first major biographer—in the bookshop of Johnson's friend, Tom Davies . They quickly became friends, although Boswell would return to his home in Scotland or travel abroad for months at

3614-443: A poor creature up in the street". The family feared that Johnson would not survive, and summoned the vicar of St Mary's to perform a baptism. Two godfathers were chosen, Samuel Swynfen, a physician and graduate of Pembroke College, Oxford , and Richard Wakefield, a lawyer, coroner and Lichfield town clerk. Johnson's health improved and he was put to wet-nurse with Joan Marklew. Some time later he contracted scrofula , known at

3753-477: A publication supported by John Payne, John Newbery , Robert Stevens and William Faden. Since The Idler did not occupy all Johnson's time, he was able to publish his philosophical novella Rasselas on 19 April 1759. The "little story book", as Johnson described it, describes the life of Prince Rasselas and Nekayah, his sister, who are kept in a place called the Happy Valley in the land of Abyssinia. The Valley

3892-428: A rhetorical perspective means to consider it as an act of communication. In A Rhetoric of Irony , Wayne C. Booth seeks to answer the question of "how we manage to share ironies and why we so often do not". Because irony involves expressing something in a way contrary to literal meaning, it always involves a kind of "translation" on the part of the audience. Booth identifies three principal kinds of agreement upon which

4031-747: A rhetorically complex phenomenon. Admired by some and feared by others, it has the power to tighten social bonds, but also to exacerbate divisions. How best to organize irony into distinct types is almost as controversial as how best to define it. There have been many proposals, generally relying on the same cluster of types; still, there is little agreement as to how to organize the types and what if any hierarchical arrangements might exist. Nevertheless, academic reference volumes standardly include at least all four of verbal irony , dramatic irony , cosmic irony , and Romantic irony as major types. The latter three types are sometimes contrasted with verbal irony as forms of situational irony , that is, irony in which there

4170-423: A sentence; syncretism is the all-round understanding which makes the sentence into a whole. In logic juxtaposition leads to an absence of implication and reciprocal justification between the successive judgments; syncretism creates a tendency to bind everything together and to justify by means of the most ingenious or the most facetious devices. In grammar , juxtaposition refers to the absence of linking elements in

4309-663: A specific meaning. In geometry , juxtaposition of names of points represents lines or line segments . In lambda calculus , juxtaposition f x {\displaystyle fx} denotes function application. In physics , juxtaposition is also used for "multiplication" of a numerical value and a physical quantity , and of two physical quantities, for example, three times π {\displaystyle \pi } would be written as 3 π {\displaystyle 3\pi } and " area equals length times width" as A = ℓ w {\displaystyle A=\ell w} . Throughout

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4448-418: A successful teacher if he ran his own school. In the autumn of 1735, Johnson opened Edial Hall School as a private academy at Edial , near Lichfield. He had only three pupils: Lawrence Offley, George Garrick, and the 18-year-old David Garrick , who later became one of the most famous actors of his day. The venture was unsuccessful and cost Tetty a substantial portion of her fortune. Instead of trying to keep

4587-531: A teacher, he moved to London and began writing for The Gentleman's Magazine . Early works include Life of Mr Richard Savage , the poems London and The Vanity of Human Wishes and the play Irene . After nine years of effort, Johnson's A Dictionary of the English Language appeared in 1755, and was acclaimed as "one of the greatest single achievements of scholarship". Later work included essays, an annotated The Plays of William Shakespeare , and

4726-512: A time. Around the spring of 1763, Johnson formed " The Club ", a social group that included his friends Reynolds, Burke , Garrick, Goldsmith and others (the membership later expanded to include Adam Smith and Edward Gibbon , in addition to Boswell himself). They decided to meet every Monday at 7:00 pm at the Turk's Head in Gerrard Street , Soho , and these meetings continued until long after

4865-508: A tolerable Grammar." Johnson's Dictionary offers insights into the 18th century and "a faithful record of the language people used". It is more than a reference book; it is a work of literature. It was the most commonly used and imitated for the 150 years between its first publication and the completion of the Oxford English Dictionary in 1928. Johnson also wrote numerous essays, sermons, and poems during his years working on

5004-599: A translation of Jerónimo Lobo 's account of the Abyssinians . Johnson read Abbé Joachim Le Grand's French translations, and thought that a shorter version might be "useful and profitable". Instead of writing the work himself, he dictated to Hector, who then took the copy to the printer and made any corrections. Johnson's A Voyage to Abyssinia was published a year later. He returned to Lichfield in February 1734, and began an annotated edition of Poliziano 's Latin poems, along with

5143-410: A universal truth about the human situation. Even Booth, whose interest is expressly rhetorical, notes that the word "irony" tends to attach to "a type of character — Aristophanes' foxy eirons , Plato's disconcerting Socrates — rather than to any one device". In these contexts, what is expressed rhetorically by cosmic irony is ascribed existential or metaphysical significance. As Muecke puts it, such irony

5282-822: A version that Johnson felt was closest to the original, based on his analysis of the manuscript editions. Johnson's revolutionary innovation was to create a set of corresponding notes that allowed readers to clarify the meaning behind many of Shakespeare's more complicated passages, and to examine those which had been transcribed incorrectly in previous editions. Included within the notes are occasional attacks upon rival editors of Shakespeare's works. Years later, Edmond Malone , an important Shakespearean scholar and friend of Johnson's, stated that Johnson's "vigorous and comprehensive understanding threw more light on his authour than all his predecessors had done". On 6 August 1773, eleven years after first meeting Boswell, Johnson set out to visit his friend in Scotland, and to begin "a journey to

5421-461: A writer is a romantic ironist if and when his or her work commits itself enthusiastically both in content and form to a hovering or unresolved debate between a world of merely man-made being and a world of ontological becoming. Similarly, metafiction is: "Fiction in which the author self-consciously alludes to the artificiality or literariness of a work by parodying or departing from novelistic conventions (esp. naturalism) and narrative techniques." It

5560-457: Is Socrates, who " knew that he knew nothing ", yet never ceased in his pursuit of truth and virtue. According to Schlegel, instead of resting upon a single foundation, "the individual parts of a successful synthesis formation support and negate each other reciprocally". Although Schlegel frequently does describe the Romantic project with a literary vocabulary, his use of the term "poetry" ( Poesie )

5699-495: Is a dual distinction between and among three grades and four modes of ironic utterance. Grades of irony are distinguished "according to the degree to which the real meaning is concealed". Muecke names them overt , covert , and private : Muecke's typology of modes are distinguished "according to the kind of relationship between the ironist and the irony". He calls these impersonal irony , self-disparaging irony , ingénue irony , and dramatized irony : To consider irony from

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5838-422: Is a place free of problems, where any desire is quickly satisfied. The constant pleasure does not, however, lead to satisfaction; and, with the help of a philosopher named Imlac, Rasselas escapes and explores the world to witness how all aspects of society and life in the outside world are filled with suffering. They return to Abyssinia, but do not wish to return to the state of constantly fulfilled pleasures found in

5977-408: Is a play within a play set in a lunatic asylum, in which it is difficult to tell whether the players are speaking only to other players or also directly to the audience. When The Herald says, "The regrettable incident you've just seen was unavoidable indeed foreseen by our playwright", there is confusion as to who is being addressed, the "audience" on the stage or the audience in the theatre. Also, since

6116-453: Is a type of fiction that self-consciously addresses the devices of fiction, thereby exposing the fictional illusion. Gesa Giesing writes that "the most common form of metafiction is particularly frequent in Romantic literature. The phenomenon is then referred to as Romantic Irony." Giesing notes that "There has obviously been an increased interest in metafiction again after World War II." For example, Patricia Waugh quotes from several works at

6255-490: Is also given metaphysical significance in the work of Søren Kierkegaard , among other philosophers. Romantic irony is closely related to cosmic irony, and sometimes the two terms are treated interchangeably. Romantic irony is distinct, however, in that it is the author who assumes the role of the cosmic force. The narrator in Tristam Shandy is one early example. The term is closely associated with Friedrich Schlegel and

6394-698: Is at odds with many 20th-century interpretations, which, neglecting the larger historical context, have been predominately postmodern . These readings overstate the irrational dimension of early Romantic thought at the expense of its rational commitments—precisely the dilemma irony is introduced to resolve. Already in Schlegel's own day, G. W. F. Hegel was unfavorably contrasting Romantic irony with that of Socrates. On Hegel's reading, Socratic irony partially anticipates his own dialectical approach to philosophy. Romantic irony, by contrast, Hegel alleges to be fundamentally trivializing and opposed to all seriousness about what

6533-409: Is both a philosophical conception of the universe and an artistic program. Ontologically, it sees the world as fundamentally chaotic. No order, no far goal of time, ordained by God or right reason, determines the progression of human or natural events […] Of course, romantic irony itself has more than one mode. The style of romantic irony varies from writer to writer […] But however distinctive the voice,

6672-457: Is directed not against this or that particular existing entity, but against the entire given actuality at a certain time. It is thoroughly negative because it is incapable of offering any positive alternative. Nothing positive emerges out of this negativity. And it is absolute because Socrates refuses to cheat. In this way, contrary to traditional accounts, Kierkegaard portrays Socrates as genuinely ignorant. According to Kierkegaard, Socrates

6811-402: Is its highest form, but in no way its only form. Irony is not the only literary term to which Schlegel assigns extra-literary significance. Indeed, irony itself is presented as the uneasy synthesis of allegory and wit . Summarized by scholar Manfred Frank : "As allegory, the individual exceeds itself in the direction of the infinite, while as wit the infinite allows the unity that breaks from

6950-576: Is known about Johnson's life between the end of 1729 and 1731. It is likely that he lived with his parents. He experienced bouts of mental anguish and physical pain during years of illness; his tics and gesticulations associated with Tourette syndrome became more noticeable and were often commented upon. By 1731 Johnson's father was deeply in debt and had lost much of his standing in Lichfield. Johnson hoped to get an usher's position, which became available at Stourbridge Grammar School, but since he did not have

7089-445: Is no ironist; so, instead of " he is being ironical " we would instead say " it is ironical that ". Verbal irony is "a statement in which the meaning that a speaker employs is sharply different from the meaning that is ostensibly expressed". Moreover, it is produced intentionally by the speaker, rather than being a literary construct, for instance, or the result of forces outside of their control. Samuel Johnson gives as an example

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7228-404: Is non-standard. Instead, he goes back to the broader sense of the original Greek poiētikós , which refers to any kind of making. As Beiser puts it, "Schlegel intentionally explodes the narrow literary meaning of Poesie by explicitly identifying the poetic with the creative power in human beings, and indeed with the productive principle in nature itself." Poetry in the restricted literary sense

7367-404: Is of substantial interest. According to Rüdiger Bubner , however, Hegel's "misunderstanding" of Schlegel's concept of irony is "total" in its denunciation of a figure actually intended to preserve "our openness to a systematic philosophy". Yet, it is Hegel's interpretation that would be taken up and amplified by Kierkegaard , who further extends the critique to Socrates himself. Thesis VIII of

7506-423: Is one's pride. Nevertheless, even as it excludes its victims, irony also has the power to build and strengthen the community of those who do understand and appreciate. Typically "irony" is used, as described above, with respect to some specific act or situation. In more philosophical contexts, however, the term is sometimes assigned a more general significance, in which it is used to describe an entire way of life or

7645-549: Is that of "life itself or any general aspect of life seen as fundamentally and inescapably an ironic state of affairs. No longer is it a case of isolated victims.... we are all victims of impossible situations". This usage has its origins primarily in the work of Friedrich Schlegel and other early 19th-century German Romantics and in Søren Kierkegaard 's analysis of Socrates in The Concept of Irony . Friedrich Schlegel

7784-673: Is the embodiment of an ironic negativity that dismantles others' illusory knowledge without offering any positive replacement. Almost all of Kierkegaard's post-dissertation publications were written under a variety of pseudonyms. Scholar K. Brian Söderquist argues that these fictive authors should be viewed as explorations of the existential challenges posed by such an ironic, poetic self-consciousness. Their awareness of their own unlimited powers of self-interpretation prevents them from fully committing to any single self-narrative, and this leaves them trapped in an entirely negative mode of uncertainty. Nevertheless, seemingly against this, Thesis XV of

7923-464: Is the finest gentleman I have ever seen.' Boswell's Life of Samuel Johnson Johnson's edition of Shakespeare was finally published on 10 October 1765 as The Plays of William Shakespeare, in Eight Volumes ;... To which are added Notes by Sam. Johnson in a printing of one thousand copies. The first edition quickly sold out, and a second was soon printed. The plays themselves were in

8062-515: Is the showing contrast by concepts placed side by side. An example of juxtaposition are the quotes "Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country", and "Let us never negotiate out of fear, but let us never fear to negotiate", both by John F. Kennedy , who particularly liked juxtaposition as a rhetorical device. Jean Piaget specifically contrasts juxtaposition in various fields from syncretism , arguing that "juxtaposition and syncretism are in antithesis, syncretism being

8201-410: Is used to create contrast, while the position of particular kinds of objects one upon the other or different kinds of characters in proximity to one another is intended to evoke meaning. Various forms of juxtaposition occur in literature , where two images that are otherwise not commonly brought together appear side by side or structurally close together, thereby forcing the reader to stop and reconsider

8340-518: The French and Indian War was a conflict between "two robbers" of Native American lands, and that neither deserved to live there. After the signing of the 1783 Treaty of Paris , marking the colonists' victory over the British, Johnson became "deeply disturbed" with the "state of this kingdom". Mr Thrale's death was a very essential loss to Johnson, who, although he did not foresee all that afterwards happened,

8479-784: The apologue The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia . In 1763 he befriended James Boswell , with whom he travelled to Scotland, as Johnson described in A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland . Near the end of his life came a massive, influential Lives of the Most Eminent English Poets of the 17th and 18th centuries. Dr Johnson was a devout Anglican , and a committed Tory . Though tall and robust, he displayed gestures and tics that disconcerted some on meeting him. Boswell's Life of Samuel Johnson , along with other biographies , documented Johnson's behaviour and mannerisms in such detail that they have informed

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8618-402: The contrary of which is known by observers (especially the audience, sometimes to other characters within the drama) to be true. Tragic irony is a specific type of dramatic irony. Cosmic irony , sometimes also called "the irony of fate", presents agents as always ultimately thwarted by forces beyond human control. It is strongly associated with the works of Thomas Hardy . This form of irony

8757-462: The early German Romantics , and in their hands it assumed a metaphysical significance similar to cosmic irony in the hands of Kierkegaard. It was also of central importance to the literary theory advanced by New Criticism in mid-20th century. Building upon the double-level structure of irony, self-described "ironologist" D. C. Muecke proposes another, complementary way in which we may typify, and so better understand, ironic phenomena. What he proposes

8896-543: The posthumous diagnosis of Tourette syndrome , a condition not defined or diagnosed in the 18th century. After several illnesses, he died on the evening of 13 December 1784 and was buried in Westminster Abbey . In his later life Johnson became a celebrity, and following his death he was increasingly seen to have had a lasting effect on literary criticism, even being claimed to be the one truly great critic of English literature. A prevailing mode of literary theory in

9035-409: The tics that would influence how people viewed him in his later years, and which formed the basis for a posthumous diagnosis of Tourette syndrome . He excelled at his studies and was promoted to the upper school at the age of nine. During this time, he befriended Edmund Hector, nephew of his "man-midwife" George Hector, and John Taylor, with whom he remained in contact for the rest of his life. At

9174-417: The 20th century drew from his views, and he had a lasting impact on biography. Johnson's Dictionary had far-reaching effects on Modern English , and was pre-eminent until the arrival of the Oxford English Dictionary 150 years later. Boswell's Life was selected by Johnson biographer Walter Jackson Bate as "the most famous single work of biographical art in the whole of literature". Samuel Johnson

9313-503: The 24-year-old King George III granted Johnson an annual pension of £300 in appreciation for the Dictionary . While the pension did not make Johnson wealthy, it did allow him a modest yet comfortable independence for the remaining 22 years of his life. The award came largely through the efforts of Sheridan and the Earl of Bute . When Johnson questioned if the pension would force him to promote

9452-728: The Americans had no more right to govern themselves than the Cornish , and asked "How is it that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of negroes ?" If the Americans wanted to participate in Parliament, said Johnson, they could move to England and purchase an estate. Johnson denounced English supporters of American separatists as "traitors to this country", and hoped that the matter would be settled without bloodshed, but he felt confident that it would end with "English superiority and American obedience". Years before, Johnson had stated that

9591-459: The Council of Trent (1619), which Cave did not accept until months later. In October 1737 Johnson brought his wife to London, and he found employment with Cave as a writer for The Gentleman's Magazine . His assignments for the magazine and other publishers during this time were "almost unparalleled in range and variety," and "so numerous, so varied and scattered" that "Johnson himself could not make

9730-448: The Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard's dissertation, The Concept of Irony with Continual Reference to Socrates , states that "irony as infinite and absolute negativity is the lightest and the weakest form of subjectivity". Although this terminology is Hegelian in origin, Kierkegaard employs it with a somewhat different meaning. Richard J. Bernstein elaborates: It is infinite because it

9869-653: The Happy Valley. Rasselas was written in one week to pay for his mother's funeral and settle her debts; it became so popular that there was a new English edition of the work almost every year. References to it appear in many later works of fiction, including Jane Eyre , Cranford and The House of the Seven Gables . Its fame was not limited to English-speaking nations: Rasselas was immediately translated into five languages (French, Dutch, German, Russian and Italian), and later into nine others. By 1762, however, Johnson had gained notoriety for his dilatoriness in writing;

10008-500: The age of 16, Johnson stayed with his cousins, the Fords, at Pedmore , Worcestershire. There he became a close friend of Cornelius Ford, who employed his knowledge of the classics to tutor Johnson while he was not attending school. Ford was a successful, well-connected academic, and notorious alcoholic whose excesses contributed to his death six years later. After spending six months with his cousins, Johnson returned to Lichfield, but Hunter,

10147-400: The arts, juxtaposition of elements is used to elicit a response within the audience's mind, such as creating meaning from the contrast. In music , it is an abrupt change of elements, and is a procedure of musical contrast . In film , the position of shots next to one another ( montage ) is intended to have this effect. In painting and photography , the juxtaposition of colours, shapes, etc,

10286-512: The author "will soon be déterré" (unearthed, dug up), but this would not happen until 15 years later. In August, Johnson's lack of an MA degree from Oxford or Cambridge led to his being denied a position as master of the Appleby Grammar School. In an effort to end such rejections, Pope asked Lord Gower to use his influence to have a degree awarded to Johnson. Gower petitioned Oxford for an honorary degree to be awarded to Johnson, but

10425-453: The best that occurred, and I took it." These essays, often on moral and religious topics, tended to be more grave than the title of the series would suggest; his first comments in The Rambler were to ask "that in this undertaking thy Holy Spirit may not be withheld from me, but that I may promote thy glory, and the salvation of myself and others." The popularity of The Rambler took off once

10564-610: The best way to organize its various types. 'Irony' comes from the Greek eironeia ( εἰρωνεία ) and dates back to the 5th century BCE. This term itself was coined in reference to a stock-character from Old Comedy (such as that of Aristophanes ) known as the eiron , who dissimulates and affects less intelligence than he has—and so ultimately triumphs over his opposite, the alazon , a vain-glorious braggart. Although initially synonymous with lying, in Plato 's dialogues eironeia came to acquire

10703-632: The character Mr. Glanville says, "you may sit in Judgment upon the Productions of a Young , a Richardson , or a Johnson . Rail with premeditated Malice at the Rambler ; and for the want of Faults, turn even its inimitable Beauties into Ridicule." (Book VI, Chapter XI) Later, the novel describes Johnson as "the greatest Genius in the present Age." His necessary attendance while his play was in rehearsal, and during its performance, brought him acquainted with many of

10842-404: The concatenated variables happen to match the name of another variable, when a variable name in front of a parenthesis can be confused with a function name, or in the correct determination of the order of operations . In mathematics , juxtaposition of symbols is the adjacency of factors with the absence of an explicit operator in an expression, especially for commonly used for multiplication:

10981-426: The contemporary poet Churchill teased Johnson for the delay in producing his long-promised edition of Shakespeare: "He for subscribers baits his hook / and takes your cash, but where's the book?" The comments soon motivated Johnson to finish his Shakespeare , and, after receiving the first payment from a government pension on 20 July 1762, he was able to dedicate most of his time towards this goal. Earlier that July,

11120-473: The day Johnson's brother died. He was penniless and pessimistic about their travel, but fortunately for them, Garrick had connections in London, and the two were able to stay with his distant relative, Richard Norris. Johnson soon moved to Greenwich near the Golden Hart Tavern to finish Irene . On 12 July 1737 he wrote to Edward Cave with a proposal for a translation of Paolo Sarpi 's The History of

11259-780: The deaths of the original members. On 9 January 1765, Murphy introduced Johnson to Henry Thrale , a wealthy brewer and MP , and his wife Hester . They struck up an instant friendship; Johnson was treated as a member of the family, and was once more motivated to continue working on his Shakespeare . Afterwards, Johnson stayed with the Thrales for 17 years until Henry's death in 1781, sometimes staying in rooms at Thrale's Anchor Brewery in Southwark . Hester Thrale's documentation of Johnson's life during this time, in her correspondence and her diary ( Thraliana ), became an important source of biographical information on Johnson after his death. During

11398-524: The degree of Master of Arts . He was awarded an honorary doctorate in 1765 by Trinity College Dublin and in 1775 by the University of Oxford. In 1776 he returned to Pembroke with Boswell and toured the college with his former tutor Adams, who by then was the Master of the college. During that visit he recalled his time at the college and his early career, and expressed his later fondness for Jorden. Little

11537-528: The dictionary. In 1750, he decided to produce a series of essays under the title The Rambler that were to be published every Tuesday and Saturday and sell for twopence each. During this time, Johnson published no fewer than 208 essays, each around 1,200–1,500 words long. Explaining the title years later, he told his friend and portraitist Joshua Reynolds : "I was at a loss how to name it. I sat down at night upon my bedside, and resolved that I would not go to sleep till I had fixed its title. The Rambler seemed

11676-448: The disadvantages in a comparable length of time." Johnson's constant work on the Dictionary disrupted his and Tetty's living conditions. He had to employ a number of assistants for the copying and mechanical work, which filled the house with incessant noise and clutter. He was always busy, and kept hundreds of books around him. John Hawkins described the scene: "The books he used for this purpose were what he had in his own collection,

11815-410: The dissertation states that "Just as philosophy begins with doubt, so also a life that may be called human begins with irony". Bernstein writes that the emphasis here must be on begins . Irony is not itself an authentic mode of life, but it is a precondition for attaining such a life. Although pure irony is self-destructive, it generates a space in which it becomes possible to reengage with the world in

11954-403: The failing school going, Johnson began to write his first major work, the historical tragedy Irene . Biographer Robert DeMaria believed that Tourette syndrome likely made public occupations like schoolmaster or tutor almost impossible for Johnson. This may have led Johnson to "the invisible occupation of authorship". Johnson left for London with his former pupil David Garrick on 2 March 1737,

12093-579: The fragmentary finitude of which contradicts the intended infinite content. Schlegel presents irony as the "structural whole" sought by these two "abstract" figures. It accomplishes this by "surpassing of all self-imposed limits". Frank cites Schlegel's descriptions from a variety of sources: Irony consists in a "constant alternation ( Wechsel ) between self-creation and self-destruction", in a "wonderful, eternal alternation between enthusiasm and irony", between "creation and destruction", an "eternal oscillation between self-expansion and self-limitation of thought",

12232-606: The grounds that "in those times nothing had been written in the Earse [i.e. Scots Gaelic] language". There were heated exchanges between the two, and according to one of Johnson's letters, MacPherson threatened physical violence. Boswell's account of their journey, The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides (1786), was a preliminary step toward his later biography, The Life of Samuel Johnson . Included were various quotations and descriptions of events, including anecdotes such as Johnson swinging

12371-630: The headmaster, "angered by the impertinence of this long absence", refused to allow Johnson to continue at the school. Unable to return to Lichfield Grammar School, Johnson enrolled at the King Edward VI grammar school at Stourbridge . As the school was located near Pedmore, Johnson was able to spend more time with the Fords, and he began to write poems and verse translations. However, he spent only six months at Stourbridge before returning once again to his parents' home in Lichfield. During this time, Johnson's future remained uncertain because his father

12510-426: The issues were collected in a volume; they were reprinted nine times during Johnson's life. Writer and printer Samuel Richardson , enjoying the essays greatly, questioned the publisher as to who wrote the works; only he and a few of Johnson's friends were told of Johnson's authorship. One friend, the novelist Charlotte Lennox , includes a defence of The Rambler in her novel The Female Quixote (1752). In particular,

12649-504: The language, kept the letter displayed on a table for anyone to read. The Dictionary was finally published in April 1755, with the title page noting that the University of Oxford had awarded Johnson a Master of Arts degree in anticipation of the work. The dictionary as published was a large book. Its pages were nearly 18 inches (46 cm) tall, and the book was 20 inches (51 cm) wide when opened; it contained 42,773 entries, to which only

12788-505: The lines established by Cicero and Quintilian near the beginning of the 1st century CE. "Irony" entered the English language as a figure of speech in the 16th century with a meaning similar to the French ironie , itself derived from the Latin. Around the end of the 18th century, "irony" takes on another sense, primarily credited to Friedrich Schlegel and other participants in what came to be known as early German Romanticism . They advance

12927-452: The match, partly because of the difference in their ages: Johnson was 25 and Elizabeth was 46. Elizabeth's marriage to Johnson so disgusted her son Jervis that he severed all relations with her. However, her daughter Lucy accepted Johnson from the start, and her other son, Joseph, later came to accept the marriage. In June 1735, while working as a tutor for the children of Thomas Whitby, a local Staffordshire gentleman, Johnson had applied for

13066-553: The meaning of the text through the contrasting images, ideas, motifs, etc. For example, "He was slouched gracefully" is a juxtaposition. More broadly, an author can juxtapose contrasting types of characters, such as a hero and a rogue working together to achieve a common objective from very different motivations. [REDACTED] The dictionary definition of juxtaposition at Wiktionary Samuel Johnson Samuel Johnson (18 September [ O.S. 7 September] 1709 – 13 December 1784), often called Dr Johnson ,

13205-416: The mind; accuses other men not only of wrong beliefs but of being wrong at their very foundations and blind to what these foundations imply[.] This is why, when we misunderstand an intended ironic utterance, we often feel more embarrassed about our failure to recognize the incongruity than we typically do when we simply misunderstand a statement of fact. When one's deepest beliefs are at issue, so too, often,

13344-469: The months passed, and he told music historian Charles Burney in December 1757 that it would take him until the following March to complete it. Before that could happen, he was arrested again, for a debt of £40, in February 1758. The debt was soon repaid by Jacob Tonson , who had contracted Johnson to publish Shakespeare , and this encouraged Johnson to finish his edition to repay the favour. Although it took him another seven years to finish, Johnson completed

13483-479: The motley circle then to be found there. Mr. David Hume related to me from Mr. Garrick, that Johnson at last denied himself this amusement, from considerations of rigid virtue; saying, 'I'll come no more behind your scenes, David; for the silk stockings and white bosoms of your actresses excite my amorous propensities. Boswell's Life of Samuel Johnson Not all of his work was confined to The Rambler . His most highly regarded poem, The Vanity of Human Wishes ,

13622-523: The observation that a survey of the literature on irony leaves the reader with the " dominant impression" that the authors are simply "talking about different subjects". Indeed, Geoffrey Nunberg , a lexical semantician , observes a trend of sarcasm replacing the linguistic role of verbal irony as a result of all this confusion. In the 1906 The King's English , Henry Watson Fowler writes, "any definition of irony—though hundreds might be given, and very few of them would be accepted—must include this, that

13761-474: The performers of both sexes, which produced a more favourable opinion of their profession than he had harshly expressed in his Life of Savage. With some of them he kept up an acquaintance as long as he and they lived, and was ever ready to shew them acts of kindness. He for a considerable time used to frequent the Green Room, and seemed to take delight in dissipating his gloom, by mixing in the sprightly chit-chat of

13900-582: The play within the play is performed by the inmates of a lunatic asylum, the theatre audience cannot tell whether the paranoia displayed before them is that of the players, or the people they are portraying. Muecke notes that, "in America, Romantic irony has had a bad press", while "in England...[it] is almost unknown." In a book entitled English Romantic Irony , Anne Mellor writes, referring to Byron , Keats , Carlyle , Coleridge , and Lewis Carroll : Romantic irony

14039-405: The position of headmaster at Solihull School . Although Johnson's friend Gilbert Walmisley gave his support, Johnson was passed over because the school's directors thought he was "a very haughty, ill-natured gent, and that he has such a way of distorting his face (which though he can't help) the gents think it may affect some lads". With Walmisley's encouragement, Johnson decided that he could be

14178-404: The predominance of the whole over the details, juxtaposition that of the details over the whole". Piaget writes: In visual perception, juxtaposition is the absence of relations between details; syncretism is a vision of the whole which creates a vague but all-inclusive schema, supplanting the details. In verbal intelligence juxtaposition is the absence of relations between the various terms of

14317-1003: The same page would imply that the politician had a common ideology with Hitler. Similarly, saying "Hitler was in favor of gun control, and so are you" would have the same effect. This particular rhetorical device is common enough to have its own name, Reductio ad Hitlerum . In algebra , multiplication involving variables is often written as a juxtaposition (e.g., x y {\displaystyle xy} for x {\displaystyle x} times y {\displaystyle y} or 5 x {\displaystyle 5x} for five times x {\displaystyle x} ), also called implied multiplication . The notation can also be used for quantities that are surrounded by parentheses (e.g., 5 ( 2 ) {\displaystyle 5(2)} or ( 5 ) ( 2 ) {\displaystyle (5)(2)} for five times two). This implicit usage of multiplication can cause ambiguity when

14456-427: The school, and by June 1732 he had returned home. Johnson continued to look for a position at a Lichfield school. After being turned down for a job at Ashbourne School, he spent time with his friend Edmund Hector, who was living in the home of the publisher Thomas Warren . At the time, Warren was starting his Birmingham Journal , and he enlisted Johnson's help. This connection with Warren grew, and Johnson proposed

14595-715: The sentence, " Bolingbroke was a holy man" (he was anything but).Verbal irony is sometimes also considered to encompass various other literary devices such as hyperbole and its opposite, litotes , conscious naïveté, and others. Dramatic irony provides the audience with information of which characters are unaware, thereby placing the audience in a position of advantage to recognize their words and actions as counter-productive or opposed to what their situation actually requires. Three stages may be distinguished — installation, exploitation, and resolution (often also called preparation, suspension, and resolution) — producing dramatic conflict in what one character relies or appears to rely upon,

14734-500: The spot his father's stall used to be. After the publication of Boswell's Life of Samuel Johnson, a statue was erected in that spot. Johnson eventually found employment as undermaster at a school in Market Bosworth , run by Sir Wolstan Dixie , who allowed Johnson to teach without a degree. Johnson was treated as a servant, and considered teaching boring, but nonetheless found pleasure in it. After an argument with Dixie he left

14873-449: The story, enjoying the kind of 'suspension of disbelief' required of realist novels...what follows is a remarkable act of metafictional 'frame-breaking ' ". As evidence, chapter 13 "notoriously" begins: "I do not know. This story I am telling is all imagination. These characters I create never existed outside my own mind. […] if this is a novel, it cannot be a novel in the modern sense". Juxtaposition Juxtaposition in literary terms

15012-662: The streets until dawn because they had no money. During this period, Johnson and Savage worked as Grub Street writers who anonymously supplied publishers with on-demand material. In his Dictionary, Johnson defined "grub street" as "the name of a street in Moorfields in London, much inhabited by writers of small histories, dictionaries, and temporary poems, whence any mean production is called grubstreet." Savage's friends tried to help him by attempting to persuade him to move to Wales, but Savage ended up in Bristol and again fell into debt. He

15151-466: The strongest manner he had ever read". Johnson wrote a sermon in her honour, to be read at her funeral, but Taylor refused to read it, for reasons which are unknown. This only exacerbated Johnson's feelings of loss and despair. Consequently, John Hawkesworth had to organise the funeral. Johnson felt guilty about the poverty in which he believed he had forced Tetty to live, and blamed himself for neglecting her. He became outwardly discontented, and his diary

15290-664: The successful translation of irony depends: common mastery of language, shared cultural values, and (for artistic ironies) a common experience of genre. A consequence of this element of in-group membership is that there is more at stake in whether one grasps an ironic utterance than there is in whether one grasps an utterance presented straight. As he puts it, the use of irony is An aggressively intellectual exercise that fuses fact and value, requiring us to construct alternative hierarchies and choose among them; [it] demands that we look down on other men's follies or sins; floods us with emotion-charged value judgments which claim to be backed by

15429-594: The surface meaning and the underlying meaning of what is said are not the same." A consequence of this, he observes, is that an analysis of irony requires the concept of a double audience "consisting of one party that hearing shall hear & shall not understand, & another party that, when more is meant than meets the ear, is aware both of that more & of the outsiders' incomprehension". From this basic feature, literary theorist Douglas C. Muecke identifies three basic characteristics of all irony: According to Wayne Booth , this uneven double-character of irony makes it

15568-425: The time as the "King's Evil" because it was thought royalty could cure it. Sir John Floyer , former physician to King Charles II , recommended that the young Johnson should receive the " royal touch ", and he did so from Queen Anne on 30 March 1712. However, the ritual proved ineffective, and an operation was performed that left him with permanent scars across his face and body. Queen Anne gave Johnson an amulet on

15707-454: The top of her chapter headed "What is metafiction?". These include: The thing is this. That of all the several ways of beginning a book […] I am confident my own way of doing it is best Since I've started this story, I've gotten boils […] Additionally, The Cambridge Introduction to Postmodern Fiction says of John Fowles 's The French Lieutenant's Woman , "For the first twelve chapters...the reader has been able to immerse him or herself in

15846-453: The two became friends. Soon after, Johnson met and befriended the painter Joshua Reynolds, who so impressed Johnson that he declared him "almost the only man whom I call a friend". Reynolds's younger sister Frances observed during their time together "that men, women and children gathered around him [Johnson]", laughing at his gestures and gesticulations. In addition to Reynolds, Johnson was close to Bennet Langton and Arthur Murphy . Langton

15985-453: The war began, the Magazine included many reviews, at least 34 of which were written by Johnson. When not working on the Magazine , Johnson wrote a series of prefaces for other writers, such as Giuseppe Baretti , William Payne and Charlotte Lennox. Johnson's relationship with Lennox and her works was particularly close during these years, and she in turn relied so heavily upon Johnson that he

16124-620: The western islands of Scotland", as Johnson's 1775 account of their travels would put it. That account was intended to discuss the social problems and struggles that affected the Scottish people, but it also praised many of the unique facets of Scottish society, such as a school in Edinburgh for the deaf and mute. Also, Johnson used the work to enter into the dispute over the authenticity of James Macpherson 's Ossian poems, claiming they could not have been translations of ancient Scottish literature on

16263-473: The whole of the interview, Johnson talked to his Majesty with profound respect, but still in his firm manly manner, with a sonorous voice, and never in that subdued tone which is commonly used at the levee and in the drawing-room. After the King withdrew, Johnson shewed himself highly pleased with his Majesty's conversation and gracious behaviour. He said to Mr Barnard, 'Sir, they may talk of the King as they will; but he

16402-500: The wholeness of the series to appear selectively." According to Schlegel, allegory points beyond itself toward that which can be expressed only poetically, not directly. He describes wit as a "selective flashing" ( Aufblitzen ); its content, he says, is "always paradoxical", its unifications of the finite and the infinite are always fragmentary. These two figures cannot exist together at once. What allegory attains indirectly by conjoining, wit attains only momentarily by total individuation,

16541-404: The work in three years, he did manage to finish it in eight. Some criticised the dictionary, including the historian Thomas Babington Macaulay , who described Johnson as "a wretched etymologist," but according to Bate, the Dictionary "easily ranks as one of the greatest single achievements of scholarship, and probably the greatest ever performed by one individual who laboured under anything like

16680-488: The work, Chesterfield wrote two anonymous essays in The World recommending the Dictionary . He complained that the English language lacked structure and argued in support of the dictionary. Johnson did not like the tone of the essays, and he felt that Chesterfield had not fulfilled his obligations as the work's patron. In a letter to Chesterfield , Johnson expressed this view and harshly criticised Chesterfield, saying "Is not

16819-453: Was "the most important single fact in Mrs Lennox's literary life". He later attempted to produce a new edition of her works, but even with his support they were unable to find enough interest to follow through with its publication. To help with domestic duties while Johnson was busy with his various projects, Richard Bathurst, a physician and a member of Johnson's Club, pressured him to take on

16958-548: Was a child in petticoats, and had learnt to read, Mrs. Johnson one morning put the common prayer-book into his hands, pointed to the collect for the day, and said, 'Sam, you must get this by heart.' She went up stairs, leaving him to study it: But by the time she had reached the second floor, she heard him following her. 'What's the matter?' said she. 'I can say it,' he replied; and repeated it distinctly, though he could not have read it more than twice. Boswell's Life of Johnson Johnson displayed signs of great intelligence as

17097-644: Was a defence of the Coercive Acts and a response to the Declaration of Rights of the First Continental Congress , which protested against taxation without representation . Johnson argued that in emigrating to America, colonists had "voluntarily resigned the power of voting", but they still retained " virtual representation " in Parliament. In a parody of the Declaration of Rights, Johnson suggested that

17236-542: Was a scholar and an admirer of Johnson who persuaded his way into a meeting with Johnson which led to a long friendship. Johnson met Murphy during the summer of 1754 after Murphy came to Johnson about the accidental republishing of the Rambler No. 190, and the two became friends. Around this time, Anna Williams began boarding with Johnson. She was a minor poet who was poor and becoming blind, two conditions that Johnson attempted to change by providing room for her and paying for

17375-477: Was already a quarter behind in his student fees, and was forced to return to Lichfield without a degree, having spent 13 months at Oxford. He left behind many books that he had borrowed from his father because he could not afford to transport them, and also because he hoped to return. He eventually did receive a degree. Just before the publication of his Dictionary in 1755, the University of Oxford awarded Johnson

17514-470: Was also distracted by Tetty's poor health as she began to show signs of a terminal illness. To accommodate both his wife and his work, he moved to 17 Gough Square near his printer, William Strahan. In preparation, Johnson had written a Plan for the Dictionary . Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield , was the patron of the Plan , to Johnson's displeasure. Seven years after first meeting Johnson to go over

17653-483: Was an English writer who made lasting contributions as a poet, playwright, essayist, moralist, literary critic , sermonist, biographer, editor, and lexicographer . The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography calls him "arguably the most distinguished man of letters in English history". Born in Lichfield , Staffordshire, he attended Pembroke College, Oxford , until lack of funds forced him to leave. After working as

17792-403: Was at the forefront of the intellectual movement that has come to be known as Frühromantik , or early German Romanticism, situated narrowly between 1797 and 1801. For Schlegel, the "romantic imperative" (a rejoinder to Immanuel Kant 's " categorical imperative ") is to break down the distinction between art and life with the creation of a "new mythology" for the modern age. In particular, Schlegel

17931-549: Was born on 18 September 1709 to Sarah Johnson (née Ford) (1669–1759) and Michael Johnson (1656–1732), a bookseller. His mother was 40 when she gave birth to Johnson in the family home above his father's bookshop in Lichfield , Staffordshire. This was considered an unusually late pregnancy, so precautions were taken, and a man-midwife and surgeon of "great reputation" named George Hector was brought in to assist. The infant Johnson did not cry, and there were concerns for his health. His aunt exclaimed that "she would not have picked such

18070-477: Was committed to debtors' prison and died in 1743. A year later, Johnson wrote Life of Mr Richard Savage (1744), a "moving" work which, in the words of the biographer and critic Walter Jackson Bate , "remains one of the innovative works in the history of biography". In 1746, a group of publishers approached Johnson with the idea of creating an authoritative dictionary of the English language. A contract with William Strahan and associates, worth 1,500 guineas ,

18209-440: Was critically celebrated but it failed to become popular, and sold fewer copies than London . In 1749, Garrick made good on his promise that he would produce Irene , but its title was altered to Mahomet and Irene to make it "fit for the stage." Irene, which was written in blank verse, was received rather poorly with a friend of Boswell's commenting the play to be "as frigid as the regions of Nova Zembla: now and then you felt

18348-589: Was deeply in debt. To earn money, Johnson began to stitch books for his father, and it is likely that Johnson spent much time in his father's bookshop reading and building his literary knowledge. The family remained in poverty until his mother's cousin Elizabeth Harriotts died in February 1728 and left enough money to send Johnson to university. On 31 October 1728, a few weeks after he turned 19, Johnson entered Pembroke College, Oxford. The inheritance did not cover all of his expenses at Pembroke, and Andrew Corbet,

18487-437: Was filled with prayers and laments over her death which continued until his own. She was his primary motivation, and her death hindered his ability to complete his work. On 16 March 1756, Johnson was arrested for an outstanding debt of £5 18 s . Unable to contact anyone else, he wrote to the writer and publisher Samuel Richardson. Richardson, who had previously lent Johnson money, sent him six guineas to show his good will, and

18626-510: Was not the first, nor was it unique. Other dictionaries, such as Nathan Bailey 's Dictionarium Britannicum , included more words, and in the 150 years preceding Johnson's dictionary about twenty other general-purpose monolingual "English" dictionaries had been produced. However, there was open dissatisfaction with the dictionaries of the period. In 1741, David Hume claimed: "The Elegance and Propriety of Stile have been very much neglected among us. We have no Dictionary of our Language, and scarce

18765-474: Was responding to what he took to be the failure of the foundationalist enterprise, exemplified for him by the philosophy of Johann Gottlieb Fichte . Irony is a response to the apparent epistemic uncertainties of anti-foundationalism. In the words of scholar Frederick C. Beiser , Schlegel presents irony as consisting in "the recognition that, even though we cannot attain truth, we still must forever strive toward it, because only then do we approach it." His model

18904-507: Was signed on the morning of 18 June 1746. Johnson claimed that he could finish the project in three years. In comparison, the Académie Française had 40 scholars spending 40 years to complete their dictionary, which prompted Johnson to claim, "This is the proportion. Let me see; forty times forty is sixteen hundred. As three to sixteen hundred, so is the proportion of an Englishman to a Frenchman." Although he did not succeed in completing

19043-625: Was told that it was "too much to be asked". Gower then asked a friend of Jonathan Swift to plead with Swift to use his influence at Trinity College Dublin to have a master's degree awarded to Johnson, in the hope that this could then be used to justify an MA from Oxford, but these efforts were again in vain, and unforthcoming. Between 1737 and 1739, Johnson befriended poet Richard Savage . Feeling guilty of living almost entirely on Tetty's money, Johnson stopped living with her and spent his time with Savage. They were poor and would stay in taverns or sleep in "night-cellars". Some nights they would roam

19182-436: Was written with such "extraordinary speed" that Boswell claimed Johnson "might have been perpetually a poet". The poem is an imitation of Juvenal's Satire X and claims that "the antidote to vain human wishes is non-vain spiritual wishes". In particular, Johnson emphasises "the helpless vulnerability of the individual before the social context" and the "inevitable self-deception by which human beings are led astray". The poem

19321-510: Was years before Johnson's Dictionary , as it came to be known, turned a profit. Authors' royalties were unknown at the time, and Johnson, once his contract to deliver the book was fulfilled, received no further money from its sale. Years later, many of its quotations would be repeated by various editions of the Webster's Dictionary and the New English Dictionary . Johnson's dictionary

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