English Language and Literature ETDs

Publication Date

5-17-1975

Abstract

Many people recall the Literary Club primarily as an assemblage of vigorous, if eccentric, talkers. Actually, the leading figures of the Club--Samuel Johnson, Edmund Burke, Joshua Reynolds, and Edward Gibbon--had much in common as reasoners. This does not mean that they agreed with each other on specific issues. It does mean that in three important areas of intellectual concern--politics, criticism, and morality--their way of approaching problems is similar.

The first section of the study treats the political reasoning of Burke, Johnson, and Gibbon. Its most important conclusions are that all three writers reacted against the application of speculative, a priori theories to political problems, and that all three, to different extents, believed that political problems are better solved by solutions based on empirical evidence. Additionally, the relation of morality to politics is a crucial one to all three writers.

The second section examines the critical writings of Johnson, Reynolds, and Burke. When one reads all three writers in succession, one sees that they share important critical assumptions, most significantly a dislike for the

priori critical precept, which is similar to the reaction

against speculative political reasoning. Johnson's Preface

to Shakespeare is a central work in this section. The relation between the writer and the reader is also examined here.

The third section discusses the moral thought of Johnson

and Burke in order to demonstrate how important their moral views are to an understanding of their political and critical writings. Again, one finds that Johnson and Burke both oppose speculative reasoning in morality; instead they offer more concrete moral positions. This section includes discussion of Johnson's and Burke's positions on specific moral issues, such as the problem evil, the value of stoicism, the need for charity, and so forth.

The conclusions of the entire study are that (1) art, critical theory, and political and social theory should be moral in purpose, and (2) that most areas of ordinary human concern have values that are "not absolute or definite, but gradual and comparative." The value of a social policy, a critical theory, or a moral system must rest on observation and experience of its effects. Politics, criticism, and morality are for Johnson, Burke, Reynolds, and Gibbon probable rather than "demonstrative" sciences, and such a position accounts for their views on specific issues as well as for their consistent opposition of "hypothetical temerity."

In the final pages of his Life of Johnson, Boswell himself presents the essential differences between Johnson the conversationalist, whom he has captured in the Life, and Johnson the serious critic and moralist. Rather than relying on the Life for many of Johnson's, Burke's, Reynolds's, or Gibbon's positions, I have used close textual analysis and many quotations (especially in the first two sections) to demonstrate the shared way of thinking that characterizes the four major figures of the Literary Club.

Degree Name

English

Level of Degree

Doctoral

Department Name

English

First Committee Member (Chair)

James Llewellyn Thorson

Second Committee Member

Morris Emery Eaves

Third Committee Member

Hoyt Trowbridge

Language

English

Document Type

Dissertation

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