A critical examination of the themes of retirement and solitude in selected prose works of Samuel Johnson

Abstract

This dissertation is an examination of the extent to which the themes of retirement and solitude appear in the major prose works of Samuel Johnson, his application of the themes, and some of the ends to which he uses the themes. The themes of retirement and solitude used in so many ways by eighteenth-century English writers have their roots in classical Greek and Roman literature. Inherent in the themes is an insistence on an ideal state of existence, and the themes are associated with everything from true happiness to the noble savage concept. Johnson's personal loathing of solitude and retirement, caused in part by his melancholy, is evident in his letters, his diaries, and in the testimony of his friends. His loathing and his impatience with the cant surrounding the themes are reflected in his major prose works, where he attacks the themes in a variety of explicit and implicit ways. In his Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland, Johnson finds, with the aid of a "realist" and a "romantick" persona, a wilderness where people who have lived in enforcement solitude and retirement welcome an end to isolation, ignorance, and superstition. He describes a primitive way of life having little but negative virtue and less joy, but one leaving much to endure. ...