The Johnson Age, also known as the Age of Sensibility, was a period in English literature from the mid-18th century to 1798. Samuel Johnson, a poet, critic, and fiction author, influenced this era with neoclassical aesthetics and Enlightenment values. The Age of Sensibility followed, characterized by anti-classical works and new forms of literary expression. Johnson’s enduring legacy includes his Dictionary of the English Language.
The Johnson Age, often referred to as the Age of Sensibility, is the period in English literature from the mid-18th century to 1798. After this era, the Romantic period arrived in 1798 with the publication of the poets’ lyrical ballads William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge.
Samuel Johnson (1709-1784), poet, critic, and fiction author, is the namesake of this period in literature. Johnson exerted a considerable influence on this era with works focusing on neoclassical aesthetics (the study of natural and artistic beauty with an eye to the great classical writers). Johnson and his colleagues placed great emphasis on Enlightenment values which stressed the importance of using knowledge, not faith and superstition, to enlighten others and led to the expansion of many social, economic and cultural areas among including astronomy, politics, and medicine.
Writers of Johnson’s age focused on the qualities of intellect, reason, balance, and order. Notable publications from Johnson’s age include Burke’s A Philosophical Inquiry into the Origins of Our Ideas on the Sublime and Beautiful (1757), Johnson’s The Rambler (1750-52), and Johnson’s The Vicar of Wakefield (1766). Goldsmith.
One of Johnson’s most enduring legacies is his Dictionary of the English Language (1755). While this enormous undertaking by Johnson was neither the first dictionary in existence, nor exceptionally unique, it was the most widely used and admired until the appearance of the Oxford English Dictionary in 1928. One of Johnson’s most fervent beliefs was that the language of the people should be used in literature and that a writer should avoid using grammars and vocabulary that the common reader does not like.
While the Johnson Age and the Age of Sensibility are terms often used interchangeably, the Johnson Age is considered to be the last of the neoclassical eras, while writers of the latter period are famous for anticipating the period romantic with their focus on the individual and imagination.
The Age of Sensibility is characterized by works that focus more directly on the anti-classical characteristics of the old ballads and new bardic poetry. These writers began to embrace new forms of literary expression previously shunned by writers of the Johnson age such as medieval history and popular literature. Classic examples of Age of Sensibility prose include Laurence Stern’s Tristram Shandy (1759) and Henry Mackenzie’s The Man of Feeling (1771). The poetry of William Collins, William Cowper, Thomas Gray and Christopher Smart is also attributed to the Age of Sensibility.
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