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Everyone’s a Critic

Everyone’s a Critic. Samuel Johnson and the problem of labeling “good literature” in our day. Here’s our Thesis.

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Everyone’s a Critic

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  1. Everyone’s a Critic Samuel Johnson and the problem of labeling “good literature” in our day

  2. Here’s our Thesis • Samuel Johnson sets forth criteria for what makes good literature (virtue, realism, pleases many, lasts for a while) and how that literature is meant to instruct and delight. Yet today, our own literary canon, to say nothing of other forms of art, contradicts this claim. We argue that art can instruct and delight, please many, and last a while without being virtuous or realistic.

  3. JOHnson’s Criteria • If it has a good reputation and has been around for a while, then it should be considered good literature.

  4. JOHnson’s Criteria • If it has pleased many, then it is good literature, but the pleasures of sudden wonder are soon exhausted. It’s Friday!

  5. Johnson’s Ideas on Literature • Realism “The irregular combinations of fanciful invention may delight awhile by that novelty of which the common satiety of life sends us all in quest; but the pleasures of sudden wonder are soon exhausted, and the mind can only repose on the stability of truth.” (The Preface to Shakespeare) “It is justly considered as the greatest excellency of art to imitate nature…” (Rambler No. 4)

  6. Johnson’s Ideas on Literature • “It is justly considered as the greatest excellency of art to imitate nature, but it is necessary to distinguish those parts of nature which are most proper for imitation: greater care is still required in representing life, which is so often discolored by passion or deformed by wickedness. If the world be promiscuously described, I cannot see of what use it can be to read the account; or why it may not be as safe to turn the eye immediately upon mankind as upon a mirror which shows all that presents itself without discrimination.” • - Rambler No.4

  7. Good literature or not?

  8. Good literature or not?

  9. Whaddaya Think?

  10. QUESTIONS • Johnson’s claim about what type of literature should be read closely mirrors our LDS values. What is the value of reading literature outside of those constraints? • Is there a cultural understanding of what makes “good” literature, or does it all come down to a matter of opinion?

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