JOHNSONのLONDON
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Johnson's London, published anonymously in 1738, gained an immediate favour among the literary circles. The aim of my paper is to consider the popularity of London from two sides; namely, (1) Wherein does the literary merit of this poem lie? and, (2) What are Johnson's satirical implications? (1) London was composed as an "Imitation" of the Third Satire of Juvenal. The original poem had already been "imitated" by Oldham and Dryden, so that Johnson is inevitably to be compared with his two forerunners. (i) Oldham belongs to the primitive stage of English satire, and some passages in his Imitation of Juvenal are too coarse to the taste of Johnson's day. But the most important difference between Oldham's and Johnson's Imitations is that the former is a social satire, while the latter is a political one. (ii) Dryden's Imitation, or "Paraphrase" according to his classification of translations, is rather diffuse, and lacks, in Johnson's comment, "the dignity of the original." Johnson's comment is very significant, for the greatest characteristic of his poem is its weight and dignity. Perhaps Johnson made a conscious effort to supply what Dryden neglected. To assess London, moreover, we must take into account Pope's Imitations of Horace, for it was there that Imitation was first turned into an instrument of political satire, and Johnson seems to have ventured to emulate the greatest poet of the eighteenth century. Pope believed that "General Satire in Times of General Vice has no force," and attacked individuals, sallying forth from where Horace spoke in general terms. Johnson, on the other hand, kept himself within the range of general or impersonal statements and abstained from invectives against living persons. He is rather a moralist than a satirist. If Pope can be called a satirist of "impassioned particularity," Johnson's eminence as a poet is his "compressed generality." (2) The late thirties of the eighteenth century was the closing period of Walpole's Whig Government. The Opposition, which was consisted of various elements, was vigorously accusing the Government of its effeminate diplomatic policy against Spain. London, being one of the anti-Walpole satire, seems to have gained a great success from its political implications. I have tried in my paper to explain the political state of affairs of the time, and add some notes on the political implications in London as a supplement to those in the Poems of Samuel Johnson, the standard edition of Johnson's poetical works edited by D. N. Smith and E. L. McAdam.
- 財団法人日本英文学会の論文
- 1962-03-30
財団法人日本英文学会 | 論文
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