Samuel Johnson's Lives of the Poets
Ethical Literary Criticism
Abstract
This open access book seeks to explain how the literary commentary of the Lives of the Poets speaks to us today because of its ethical goals. Edward Tomarken elucidates this element of Johnson’s literary criticism by using Ralph Cohen’s genre method, the topic of Chapter One, “Why Genre”. Chapters two to five address the most prevalent genres of the Lives: tragedy, metaphysical poetry, the epic, the pastoral elegy, and the mock epic. Chapter six considers the rise of literary criticism as a genre. Chapter Seven demonstrates how ethical genre criticism relates literature to life. And the final chapter explains why, although Johnson considers ‘moral’ and ‘ethical’ as nearly interchangeable terms, Tomarken prefers ‘ethical’ because it relates genre criticism to present problems in literary and non-literary worlds.
Keywords
Epic; Pastoral elegy; Ethics; Morality; Value judgment; Genre method; MetaphysicsDOI
10.1007/978-3-031-61842-0ISBN
9783031618420, 9783031618413, 9783031618420Publisher
Springer NaturePublisher website
https://www.springernature.com/gp/products/booksPublication date and place
Cham, 2024Imprint
Palgrave MacmillanSeries
Palgrave Studies in the Enlightenment, Romanticism and Cultures of Print,Classification
Literature: history and criticism
Literary studies: c 1600 to c 1800
Biography, Literature and Literary studies