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Biography as the Redemptive Text in Samuel Johnson’s Lives of the English Poets



Author(s)

XIA Xiao-min

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DOI:10.17265/1539-8072/2012.07.009

China Youth University for Political Sciences, Beijing, China

This paper attempts to look into some of Samuel Johnson’s Lives of the English Poets (1925) and find out the common feature these biographical texts share. The close reading and detailed analysis demonstrate that Samuel Johnson manages to redeem and restore the biographical subjects’ (the poets’) life, honor, and status in their different but similar biographies; that is, each biography is a redemptive text in its own way. In specific, the credible life story is re-presented with selected biographical materials, the poets’ lives together with their achievements are reevaluated under Johnson’s corrective observation, and Johnson’s empathy with the poets reestablishes the reader’s understanding of the poets’ literary careers.

Samuel Johnson, biography, redemptiveness, redemptive text