Samuel Johnson and Poetic Labour

"Thou art a Retailer of Phrases; And dost deal in Remnants of Remnants, Like a maker of Pincushions." Unknown artist, 1803, courtesy of the National Portrait Gallery, London. 

The Colloquium on Romanticism and the Long Eighteenth Century is delighted to announce its first return speaker - Prof. Frans De Bruyn (University of Ottawa). 

Prof. De Bruyn will give a talk at 2.30pm, on Friday, February the 28th, in the refurbished Gordon Wood Lounge (Dunton Tower 1811) on an intriguing subject - Dr. Johnson and Poetic Labour.  Sumptuous refreshments will be served.

Read a sneak preview here!

“In my talk, I propose to show how Johnson conceives of the art of writing in Virgilian georgic terms, as labour, and how this conception of writing as labour culminates in a characteristically eighteenth-century critical ideal: an aesthetic of laboured style and form. This view of literary creativity as a function primarily of work rather than the unbidden promptings of genius, as much a matter of perspiration as inspiration, makes a significant contrast, as I will show, with prevailing conceptions of the creative act in the historical periods preceding and following the eighteenth century.”