00075--What is Dr. Samuel Johnson's 'Doctrinal Classicism'?

                                                         

Dr.Samuel Johnson

                                      

            Johnson eminently represents the persistence of classical dogma.  He belongs to the older, traditional, school of criticism, and its authority being undermined by the rising romantic school he felt a need to assert its principles and justify it.  Dr. Johnson is the spokesman of the classical school, he asserts effectively its doctrines, and hence Legouise and Cazamian call his classicism, 'Doctrinal Classicism'.  He was well-steeped in the writers of antiquity which had formed his reading since earliest times, and so his classicism is based on habit, upon the impression of the youth.

            A respect for tradition is innate in him.  He has a fear of, or contempt for all innovations, and his criticism everywhere reflects his search for stability, discipline and order.  He throws all the force of his vigorous and towering personality in the defense of tradition, order, discipline and authority.  It is largely owing to his sovereign influence that the reign of classicism is prolonged and the new spirit is kept down, though it continues to work beneath the surface.  He was the literary dictator of his age and his influence did much to determine and shape critical theory of the age.

00058--Briefly explain/analyse Dr. Johnson's views on Drama and its art.

            In his analysis of dramatic art, Dr. Johnson has given his views on all debatable points such as the dramatic unities, dramatic pleasure, and the tragicomedies. 

→        First of all he says that drama must be "a faithful mirror of manners and of life.  It should present human sentiments in human language.  The story of drama must be true of life, but it must not be the story of one man or a few men, but of a wide section of humanity.  Shakespeare's plays are great because each play is a miniature picture of any one aspect of the whole of humanity. 

→        So far as Dramatic unities are concerned, Dr. Johnson approved of only one unity – the unity of Action.  This is necessary to make the plot complete and one whole.  There would be utter chaos if there were many actions leading to different ends.  In a good play all the actions should join together and lead to one desired end.  So far as the unities of Time and Place are concerned, he finds them unnecessary and highly undesirable. 

            The stage in a play is an imaginary platform.  It is neither a real Rome nor a real Alexandria, and therefore the shifting of scenes from one place to another is also an imaginative process.  So is the case with the passage of time.  The audience imaginatively travels from place to place, and passes days and years through the same process of imagination.  After all, a play is not a literal picture but an imaginative recreation of life.  In the same way he defends tragicomedy.  Life itself is a mingling of tragic and comic occurrences.  Moreover, tragic and comic scenes throw each other into greater relief by contrast.  Therefore there is nothing unnatural or inartistic in a tragicomedy.

00057--Discuss Dr. Johnson's comments on various forms of poetry.

            Dr. Johnson had his own views on the various forms of poetry.  He graded different forms of poetry according to his estimation of each.  He considered the epic to be the highest form of poetry.         "By the general consent of critics", he says, "the first praise of genius is due to the writer of an epic poem, as it requires an assemblage of all the powers which are singly sufficient for other compositions.  Epic poetry undertakes to teach the most important truths by the most pleasing precepts, and therefore relates some great events in the most affecting manner."  Tragedy comes next only to the epic, primarily on account of its cathartic effect.  But Dr. Johnson does not go to that extent.

            Among the verse forms which he placed lowest in their merit are the pastoral and the Pindaric Ode.  The pastoral may have pleased the public in ancient times by its realistic pictures of the countryside-hills, valleys, streams, shepherds and their flock.  But now these objects have lost their charms.  It is now highly artificial to presume that the poet is a shepherd living in pastoral dales with his flock of sheep and lambs, and whining away his time on his flute.  It is on account of his artificial imagery that he condemns Milton's famous pastoral elegy Lycidas.  About Lycidas he says, "In this poem there is no nature, for there is no truth; there is no art, for there is nothing new.  Its form is that of a pastoral, easy, vulgar, and therefore disgusting".  Almost for the same reason he considered the Pindaric Ode unsuited to modern conditions,  It may have suited the particular occasions in ancient Greece, for which it was intended, but now it is merely a form without any substance today.

00056--Discuss Dr. Johnson's historical approach to criticism.

Rising above the classical approach to criticism, Dr. Johnson also developed and practised historical approach to criticism.   This does not in anyway mean that Dr.  Johnson over ruled the classical principles.  It only means that he added historical approach wherever this led to the better evaluation of a literary work.  He holds that every literary work is conditioned by the historical background and the author's age and environment.  No literary work can be correctly evaluated without taking into consideration "the genius of the age and nation in which the author lived".

            Dr. Johnson says, "To judge rightly of an author, we must transport ourselves to his time, and examine what were the wants of his contemporaries, and what were his means of supplying them."  What may be essential at one time may become superfluous at another time.  The author's biographical conditions, his opportunities and limitations are essential to consider in order to form a correct estimate of his performance.  In other words, the historical estimate is an important factor in the real estimate of an author.  Without taking into consideration the socio-religious conditions of fourteenth century England, our evaluation of Chaucer, as a writer, would be grossly wrong.  In the same way we cannot correctly evaluate the literature of the Restoration Age without placing it in the age of Charles II and the morals he brought in from France.  While evaluating Milton, we must know his handicaps, his blindness, his opposition on religious and political grounds and how he overcomes them simply by his genius.  Then only we would know his real greatness as a poet.

00055--Briefly discuss Dr. Johnson's Theory of Criticism.

            Dr. Johnson was a classicist with a certain degree of flexibility in his critical theory.  He wrote no regular critical treatise.  His critical observations are found in some of his papers published in the 'Rambler' and 'Rasselas', and in his 'Preface to the plays of Shakespeare' and 'Lives of the Poets'.  His critical theory was basically classical but he did not adhere slavishly to the principles laid down by the ancients.  To the classical theory he also added his own personal view together with the historical and biographical approach.  He himself said that he sought "to determine upon principles the merit of composition.  He equated unguided taste with 'Caprice' and considered unprincipled criticism 'haphazard'.  He believed that the rules laid down by the ancients must be subject to change, for "every new genius produces some innovation which, when invented and approved, subverts the rules which the practice of foregoing authors had established".

            Dr. Johnson said, "The arbitrary edicts of legislators who, out of various means by which the same end may be attained, selected such as happened to occur to their own reflection".  Their application cannot be universal.  He admitted that some of those principles were "fundamental and indispensable" and must be adhered to.  A true critic should "neither violate essential principles by a desire of novelty, nor debar himself from the attainment of beauties within his view by a needless fear of breaking the rules".

            According to Johnson, the historical conditions, the background of the age, and the biographical factors must be taken into consideration when evaluating the work of an author.  This is what he does in The Lives of the Poets which is his most outstanding biographical and critical work.