LIT 112S Samuel Johnson

Samuel Johnson was the greatest man of letters in 18th-century England. A voracious reader, Johnson dropped out of college because he was poor. He made a sparse living as a journalist, wrote a novel, compiled the first dictionary of the English language. He edited the works of Shakespeare and established enduring principles for criticism. His last major project was a series of essays about 52 poets, combining biography and literary criticism in ways that no one had ever done. Course follows the arc of Johnson’s life through his varied and prolific writings, giving special attention to the ways he understood the relationship between life and literature.