Abyssinia's Samuel Johnson : Ethiopian thought in the making of an English author

Author(s)

Bibliographic Information

Abyssinia's Samuel Johnson : Ethiopian thought in the making of an English author

Wendy Laura Belcher

Oxford University Press, c2012

  • : hardback

Available at  / 7 libraries

Search this Book/Journal

Note

Includes bibliographical references (p. [250]-274) and index

Description and Table of Contents

Description

As a very young man, one of the most celebrated English authors of the eighteenth century translated a tome about Ethiopia. This experience permanently marked Samuel Johnson, leaving traces of the African discourse he encountered in that text in his drama Irene; several of his short stories; and his most famous fiction, Rasselas. In this book, Wendy Laura Belcher provides a much needed perspective in comparative literature and postcolonial studies on the power of the discourse of the other to infuse European texts. Belcher illuminates how the Western literary canon is globally produced by developing the powerful metaphor of spirit possession to posit some texts in the European canon as energumens, texts that are spoken through. Her model of discursive possession offers a new way of theorizing transcultural intertextuality, in particular how Europe's others have co-constituted European representations. Through close readings of primary and secondary sources in English, French, Portuguese, and Ge'ez, Belcher challenges conventional wisdom on Johnson's work, from the inspiration for the name Rasselas and the nature of Johnson's religious beliefs to what makes Rasselas so strange.

Table of Contents

  • Preface
  • Acknowledgments
  • Introduction 1
  • Chapter 1. Three Thousand Years of Habesha History and Discourse
  • Chapter 2: Samuel Johnson's Discursive Possession and The Voyage to Abyssinia
  • Chapter 3: Johnson's Reading, Beliefs, and Translation of The Voyage to Abyssinia
  • Chapter 4: Habesha Discourse in The Voyage To Abyssinia
  • Chapter 5: Habesha Discourse and Johnson's Drama Irene
  • Chapter 6: Habesha Discourse and Johnson's Oriental Tales
  • Chapter 7: Habesha Discourse in Johnson's Sources for Rasselas
  • Chapter 8: Habesha Discourse and Johnson's Rasselas
  • Conclusion
  • Bibliography

by "Nielsen BookData"

Details

Page Top