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The traditional view of Samuel Johnson as hostile to particulars, trifles, and aesthetic mediocrity only half-explains his authorial character. Samuel Johnson and the Art of Sinking 1709-1791 argues that, in a period dominated by social and literary hierarchies, Johnson's works reveal a defining interest in 'little', 'mean', or 'low' topics and people. Freya Johnston moves away from a critical emphasis on what literature of this period excludes, to consider its modes of including recalcitrant material. Of necessity finite, any piece of writing is informed by the subject matter it omits or to which it indirectly alludes. How can we identify the peripheral topics or characters purportedly 'excluded' from a text, unless it provides compelling inferences that oblige us to supply the omission? In which case, something subtler is at work than barefaced proscription. Rehearsing the comparative merits of great and little things, Johnson and his contemporaries tested the opposing claims of pagan and Christian authority. Ancient criticism, and its eighteenth-century adherents, held that each subject required an appropriate style: little matters call for the low, lofty ones for the high. Yet Gospel writers stressed Christ's incarnation as a praiseworthy and imitable descent to the humanly little — one that is compatible with the most sublime style. Through a series of close readings, this book examines how Johnson conceived of his relationships to and with the margins of writing and of society. It proposes that his literary and critical practice is neither inclusive nor exclusive in its attitudes towards peripheral things.
Medical doctor George Cheyne, little known today, was among the most quoted men in eighteenth-century Britain. A 450-pound behemoth renowned for his Falstaffian appetites, he nevertheless advocated moderation to his neurotic clientele. Cheyne was an early admirer of Isaac Newton and a writer on mathematics and natural philosophy, yet he also linked science and mysticism in his writings. This inventor of the all-lettuce diet was both an author of learned tomes and, to his patients, a fellow sufferer who struggled with obesity and depression. Scientist and mystic, patient and healer, libertine and scholar, Cheyne embodies the contradictions and obsessions of the Age of Enlightenment. Anita Guerrini reconstructs the ideas, events, and interconnections in Cheyne’s era and shows how Cheyne’s life and work uniquely epitomize the transition between premodern and modern culture.
The political writings of John Wesley (1703-1791) reveal a passionate campaigner engaged throughout his life with the care of the oppressed. His life was one of great paradox: as a high-churchman and Tory, living under the instruction of the Bible, tradition set him against radical change, yet few individuals could have been more responsible for upheaval in church and society. He believed scriptures set him against the cause of democracy, yet scarcely one other single person could have contributed more to its realization. His gospel religion inflamed in him an outrage at the social and political evils of his day that was barely matched by the more explicitly radical of his contemporaries. This volume collects addresses and pamphlets that capture Wesley's views on a variety of political subjects including the nature of political power, his response to Richard Price's Observations on Liberty, his views on slavery, on poverty, on the secession of the American colonies, and on the luxury of the rich. Together they make clear the relevance of Wesley to subsequent developments in the abolition of slavery and the evolution of labour politics. The book features an extensive new introduction by the editor.