Description: Johnson's Critical Presence demonstrates how Johnson's criticism has for long been divided from the issues of modern criticism by historical narratives that have marked the progress of criticism from 'classic to romantic'. The image of Johnson constructed by his immediate antagonists has been preserved by the routines of historical representation, and mediated to the present day, most recently, by the characterizations of 'radical theory'. By an in-depth analysis of major works by Johnson, Smallwood argues that the historicization of eighteenth-century criticism can be more fruitfully understood in the light of the 'dialogic' and 'translational' historiography of such thinkers as Collingwood and Ricoeur, and that the contexts of Johnson's criticism must include the poetry he read as well as the theories he espoused. In this way the book reinstates Johnson's 'presence' as critic while displacing the 'history of ideas' as the leading paradigm for conceptualizing the history of criticism.
Review Quotes: Prize: Winner of a Choice Outstanding Academic Title Award 2005 'a work of considerable distinction and authority...it constitutes, in my view, one of the most important studies of Johnson's criticism - indeed of eighteenth-century criticism more generally - to have appeared in the last half century'. Professor David Hopkins, University of Bristol '... a welcome restatement of the critical pre-eminence of Samuel Johnson in English literary criticism.' TLS 'A magnificent addition to Johnson scholarship and to the study of literary criticism in general, this book will further appreciation of Johnson not only as a historical critic but also as a critic with enormous current and future relevance... Essential.' Choice '... this meticulous book...' BARS Bulletin and Review