Most critics note that Samuel Johnson’s History of Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia is as much essay, parable, and cautionary tale as novel. Johnson sought to counter the popular optimistic philosophy supported by the French Rousseau and German Leibnitz, which held that introspection remains all-important, with emotion championing action. Johnson believed such focus on thought as solution would lead to no solutions at all. One must gather evidence, make a decision, and take action.

Johnson was not alone in his protest, as the Frenchman Voltaire published Candide, his counter to the current belief, at almost exactly the same time. As a parable, Rasselas does not reflect realistic writing, its moral points overriding character and plot development. Johnson intended the action merely as basis for his argument.

Supposedly he wrote the book in spare evening moments without revision in order to pay his mother’s funeral expenses. He sent it to a publisher and received an immediate £100. The foreign setting appealed to readers, as did Johnson’s detail, the result of knowledge he gained in part from translating A Voyage to Abyssinia by Father Jerome Lobo, although he did not strive particularly for a realistic setting, choosing an exotic locale.

The three sections of the book encompass the journey of Rasselas, an emperor’s son who, like the Buddha, decides to leave his luxurious environment to become familiar with the real world. He slips away from his happy valley accompanied by his sister, Nekayah, and Imlac, an aged philosopher. In Egypt, Rasselas’s idealism regarding the outer world is challenged by its reality. Rasselas discovers that literature, love, philosophy, and science all promote false hope, grasped in moments of conflict by otherwise rational human beings.

Through his various encounters, Johnson shapes philosophical discussions with a gently humorous style, inserting the aphorisms for which he became well known. In expounding on “The Dangerous Prevalence of Imagination,” he makes clear the danger of immersion into thought, when man “must conceive himself what he is not; for who is pleased with what he is?” He continues regarding the results, which include “boundless futurity,” as he “amuses his desires with impossible enjoyments, and confers upon his pride unattainable dominion.”

Johnson does leave unresolved some important issues, emphasizing the value of discussion, as he deflates pastoral idealism in favor of more realistic action. The fact that Rasselas cannot resolve certain issues, discovering that sympathy for the ills of others offers no solution, allows Johnson to emphasize that wisdom without action proves useless.

In 1750, Johnson had written an essay for The Rambler which reminded writers of what he labeled “the comedy of romance,” seen in Henry Fielding’s Tom Jones (1749), of their responsibility to the reading public not to draw their characters too realistically and not to romanticize criminal acts. He believed that “that observation which is called knowledge of the world will be found much more frequently to make men cunning than good,” his statement prefiguring his own later work, designed to counter the philosophy of optimism.

While Johnson’s simplistic, enjoyable style recommends the book, it remains important mainly for establishing the novel as a vehicle for intellectual theory.

Literary Criticism of Samuel Johnson

Bibliography

Damrosch, Leopold. Samuel Johnson and the Tragic Sense. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1972.

Green, Donald, ed. Samuel Johnson: The Major Works. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000.

Phelps, Gilbert. An Introduction to Fifty British Novels 1600–1900. London: Pan Books, 1979.

Categories: British Literature, Literature, Novel Analysis

Tags: 18th century British literature, 18th century moral literature, Analysis of Samuel Johnson’s History of Rasselas, Candide and Rasselas, comedy of romance, critique of optimism, Enlightenment literature, exotic settings in 18th century novels, Fielding Tom Jones, History of Rasselas, imagination and reality in literature, Imlac, introspection vs action, Johnson and idealism, Johnson and pastoral idealism, Johnson and realism, Johnson and The Rambler, Johnson and Voltaire, Johnson aphorisms, Johnson vs Leibnitz, Johnson vs Rousseau, Johnson’s writing style, literature and action, literature and moral responsibility, moral fiction, Nekayah, novel as intellectual discourse, philosophical novel, Prince of Abyssinia, Rasselas analysis, Rasselas characters, Rasselas summary, Rasselas themes, Rasselas unresolved questions, Samuel Johnson, Samuel Johnson criticism, Samuel Johnson philosophy, Samuel Johnson’s History of Rasselas, satire in Rasselas