Shelley has explained his lofty view of poetry in a prose-essay, A Defence of Poetry. Poetry was to him what religion is to most people—an idealization of life. According to Shelley “a poem is the very image of life expressed in eternal truth/” He defines poetry as “the expression of the imagination” as contradistinguished from that of …
JOHNSON AS A SHAKESPEARIAN EDITOR JOHNSON’S HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE JOHNSON ON SHAKESPEARE’S MERITS JOHNSON ON SHAKESPEARE’S DEFECT JOHNSON ON POETIC JUSTICE AND SHAKESPEARE’S MORALITY JOHNSON’S PREFERENCE FOR SHAKESPEARE’S COMEDIES T.S. ELIOT. JOHNSON’S ACHIEVEMENT : MERITS AND DEFECTS
Joseph Wood Krutch : In the first place, he (Johnson) is primarily concerned, not with convicting Shakespeare of vulgarity but of explaining how he has come to be charged with such a fault by persons who mistake custom for nature. In the second place Johnson is demonstrating not that time has served to render Shakespeare ridiculous …
Why should Johnson have thought Shakespeare’s comic parts were spontaneous, and that his tragic parts were laboured? Here; it seems to me, Johnson, by his simple integrity, in being wrong has happened on some truth much deeper than he knew. For to those who have experienced the full horror of life, tragedy is still inadequate. Sophocles felt …
Joseph Wood Krutch It should also be remembered that in one respect, at least, Johnson’s effort to discover the moral as well as the other qualities of Shakespeare carried him a definite step beyond his contemporaries; he saw, as most of them did not, that one must always contemplate the whole of a play rather …
Joseph Wood krutch : It is also true that Johnson once remarked, when he was again praising Congreve: “Shakespeare never has six lines together without a fault. But he was merely saying what every critic without exception from the days of Ben Johnson on, had said and what was perfectly obvious to any one familiar with …
Johnson Wood Krutch : If, as may certainly be maintained, the final test of a critic is willingness and ability to recognize excellence even when he cannot account for it, to be able to put loyalty to greatness before loyalty to his own theories, then Johnson passes that test with flying colours like all critics of …
Jean H. Hagstrum Thus literary research is often based upon a desire to determine the extent of an authors originality. If “the highest praise of genius is original invention’ — and no dictum of Johnson is more characteristic than this — it follows that criticism must be silent until it is determined just how original the …
W:K. Wimsatt. Johnson entertained very sound views about the philological part of an editor’s duties. His performance in this respect was, by modern standards, uneven, capricious, often notably deficient. But by any standards illustrated upon his own day, his performance was extraordinary. For reasons in part no doubt well known in the relation with Garrick which …
“The Scarlet Letter” by Nathaniel Hawthorne is rich in symbolism, with various objects, characters, and settings representing deeper themes and ideas. Here are some key symbols found in the novel: These are just a few examples of the symbolism present in “The Scarlet Letter.” Hawthorne’s masterful use of symbols adds depth and layers of meaning …