Book contents
- The New Cambridge Companion to Samuel Johnson
- The New Cambridge Companion to Samuel Johnson
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Contributors
- Short Titles and Note on the Text and Cover Art
- Introduction: Contemporary Johnson
- Chapter 1 Johnson, Ethics, and Living
- Chapter 2 Johnson and the Essay
- Chapter 3 Johnson and Renaissance Humanism
- Chapter 4 Johnson and Language
- Chapter 5 Johnson and British Historiography
- Chapter 6 Johnson and Fiction
- Chapter 7 Johnson and Gender
- Chapter 8 Johnson, Race, and Slavery
- Chapter 9 Johnson’s Politics
- Chapter 10 Johnson’s Poetry
- Chapter 11 Johnson’s Editions of Shakespeare
- Chapter 12 Johnson’s Lives of the Poets: A Guided Tour
- Chapter 13 Johnson as Biographer
- Chapter 14 Johnson and Travel
- Chapter 15 Johnson and Disability
- Chapter 16 Representing Johnson in Life and After
- Chapter 17 Johnson among the Scholars
- Further Reading
- Index
- Cambridge Companions To …
Chapter 14 - Johnson and Travel
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 September 2022
- The New Cambridge Companion to Samuel Johnson
- The New Cambridge Companion to Samuel Johnson
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Contributors
- Short Titles and Note on the Text and Cover Art
- Introduction: Contemporary Johnson
- Chapter 1 Johnson, Ethics, and Living
- Chapter 2 Johnson and the Essay
- Chapter 3 Johnson and Renaissance Humanism
- Chapter 4 Johnson and Language
- Chapter 5 Johnson and British Historiography
- Chapter 6 Johnson and Fiction
- Chapter 7 Johnson and Gender
- Chapter 8 Johnson, Race, and Slavery
- Chapter 9 Johnson’s Politics
- Chapter 10 Johnson’s Poetry
- Chapter 11 Johnson’s Editions of Shakespeare
- Chapter 12 Johnson’s Lives of the Poets: A Guided Tour
- Chapter 13 Johnson as Biographer
- Chapter 14 Johnson and Travel
- Chapter 15 Johnson and Disability
- Chapter 16 Representing Johnson in Life and After
- Chapter 17 Johnson among the Scholars
- Further Reading
- Index
- Cambridge Companions To …
Summary
Samuel Johnson’s lifelong interest in travel and travel writing aligns neatly, in many ways, with his empiricist metaphysics. When we travel, we compare our assumptions and preconceptions against the real world and track the inevitable incongruities. But Johnson’s enduring interest in travel also reveals a more complex engagement with the material world – and Lockean empiricism more broadly – than we often recognize, and his attitude toward the genre is more complicated, more critical and probing, than we might expect. With reference primarily to Rasselas and A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland, this chapter examines how Johnson leverages travel to combat habituation; enable comparative knowledge, which produces meaning and value; and assess our bodies and minds as we perceive, digest, and retain knowledge. Facilitating a comparative intellectual paradigm, and foregrounding epistemology, travel is, for Johnson, a critical posture that underpins his thinking far beyond his travel texts.
Keywords
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The New Cambridge Companion to Samuel Johnson , pp. 191 - 203Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2022