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The Structure of Rasselas

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Gwin J. Kolb
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Extract

In beginning a discussion of the structure of Rasselas one need not spend much time clearing the ground of previous arguments before advancing one's own. What the new commentator must face—and this is perhaps more disturbing than arguments would be—is the almost universal opinion that Rasselas has only the slightest structure and that the little it does have results from Johnson's not too successful effort to write an ordinary novel or “oriental tale.” The narrative is “episodic,” unimportant, dull, say some critics; the ending concludes nothing, the work merely stops. The action—and some of the characters —say others, lack dramatic power. At the same time that they thus observe, either directly or indirectly, the tale's failure to conform to their notions of what the structure should be, most commentators recognize a fundamental difference between Johnson's piece and those works in the light of which they attempt to judge Rasselas. Wishing to make the difference clear and to do justice to what they feel is a manifest accomplishment, they praise the wisdom set forth in the book and the skill and power displayed in individual chapters.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 66 , Issue 5 , September 1951 , pp. 698 - 717
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1951

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References

Note 1 in page 698 Perhaps the most positive statement of the minority opinion is made by Sir Walter Raleigh, who, in The English Novel (London, 1894), after admitting that Rasselas may be a “sermon” rather than a “novel,” declares that “the structure of the plot is masterly, the events are arranged in a skilful climax, culminating in the story of the mad astronomer ...” (p. 206). O. F. Emerson's discussion in the introduction to his edition of Rasselas (New York, 1895) indicates that he, too, credits it with a rather systematic organization (pp. xxxvii-xl).

Note 2 in page 698 E.g., Thomas Seccombe, The Age of Johnson, 3rd ed. (London, 1907), p. 12; D. Nichol Smith's remarks in the CHEL, x, 201.

Note 3 in page 698 See, e.g., G. B. Hill, ed. Rasselas (Oxford, 1887), p. 31; Leslie Stephen, Hours in a Library (New York, 1899), n, 17; D. Nichol Smith's comment in the CHEL, x, 201; Louis Cazamian, A History of English Literature (New York, 1939), p. 834; George Sherburn in A Literary History of England (New York & London, 1948), pp. 994–995.

Note 4 in page 698 See, e.g., the writers and works cited in the preceding note.

Note 5 in page 698 C. R. Tracy, “Democritus, Arise!: A study of Dr. Johnson's Humor,” Yale Rev., xxxrx (1950), 305. The prince, according to Tracy, is “the antithesis of the man of common sense of the eighteenth century, and a stubborn rationalist who makes himself ridiculous by refusing to comply with the modus vivendi that has been worked out by the men of good sense of his age” (p. 309). Although no one, I suppose, would deny that certain incidents in the book are humorous and amusing and that Rasselas himself is mildly ridiculous at times, Tracy's argument about the form of the work as a whole remains unconvincing. Its essential weakness, as it seems to me, lies in the arbitrary limitation of the kinds of works which Rasselas might represent; for Tracy the choice is between tragedy and comedy, and not unnaturally he chooses comedy. As I hope to demonstrate in the course of this paper, the contents of Rasselas appear to best advantage if the book is viewed (as most critics have thought it should be considered) as a didactic work, of the same general sort as The Vanity of Human Wishes and Rambler Nos. 204–205 (see p. 700 below). Tracy acknowledges that Rasselas “is a kind of ‘Vanity of Human Wishes’ ” (p. 310) but apparently fails to see anything incongruous between this admission and his insistence that Rasselas is a comic work.

Note 6 in page 699 See, e.g., William Lyon Phelps, Advance of the English Novel (New York, 1916), p. 71. Other historians of the novel suggest that the tale is an “Oriental apologue”—Robert M. Lovett and Helen S. Hughes, The History of the Novel in England (Boston, 1932), p. 124—or “the longest and most sustained of [Johnson's] sermons on the vanity of human wishes” —Ernest A. Baker, The History of the English Novel (London, 1934), iv, 61.

Note 7 in page 699 George Saintsbury, The Peace of the Augustans (London, 1916), p. 190. Saintsbury says, “Except Ecclesiastes, Rasselas is probably the wisest, though with that same exception it is almost the saddest book ever written.”

Note 8 in page 700 In the remarks on Rasselas in his Samuel Johnson (New York, 1944), Joseph Wood Krutch says that part of the story “would seem to be no more than a device for introducing a survey of some of the various conditions of life ...” (p. 176). But Krutch does not extend his comment to cover the whole narrative nor does he concern himself with an analysis of the book's organization (see pp. 175 ff.).

Note 9 in page 700 Practically all discussions of Rasselas note the similarity in ideas between it and The Vanity of Human Wishes, and several mention the likenesses between it and these two Rambler papers; see, e.g., Emerson's ed., pp. xvii, xxxi, and Miss Martha Conant, The Oriental Tale in England in the Eighteenth Century (New York, 1908), pp. 123–124.

Note 10 in page 701 See Johnson's translation of F. Jerome Lobo's Voyage to Abyssinia (London, 1735), pp. 102, 118.

Note 11 in page 701 Charles Jacques Poncet, Journey to Abyssinia, in Pinkerton's Collection of Voyages (London, 1814), xv, 89.

Note 12 in page 703 Lovett and Hughes, Hist. of the Novel, p. 125; Tracy (see n. 5), p. 310.

Note 13 in page 703 For further discussion of this point, see p. 707 below.

Note 14 in page 703 See, e.g., Emerson (ii. 1, above), pp. xxvi, xxviii-xxix.

Note 15 in page 703 For evidence of their use of this material, see, e.g., Evert Mordecai Clark, “Milton's Abyssinian Paradise,” Studies in English (Austin, Texas, 1950), xxix, 129–150; Lane Cooper, “The Abyssinian Paradise in Coleridge and Milton,” MP, iii (1906), 327–332.

Note 16 in page 704 For a more detailed discussion of the “Dissertation on Flying,” see my article on “Johnson's ‘Dissertation on Flying’ and John Wilkins' Mathematical Magick,” MP, xlvii (1949), 24–31.

Note 17 in page 707 In this connection, see p. 717 below.

Note 18 in page 713 Owen Ruffhead—Monthly Review, xx (May 1759), 428–438—having admitted the great usefulness of “fiction or romance” in making the “dictates of morality agreeable to mankind,” insists that “tale-telling is not the talent” of the author of Rasselas. He also objects to the “matter” of the work: “the topics” have been handled until they are “threadbare”; most of the “sentiments” are to be found “in the Persian and Turkish tales, and other books of the like sort; wherein they are delivered to better purpose, and cloathed in a more agreeable garb” (p. 428).

Note 19 in page 714 Rasselas “may be regarded,” Martha Conant says in TheOriental Tale in England, “as the best type of the serious English oriental tale” (p. 140), being raised to this height by Johnson's “earnestness and dignity” (p. 153).

Note 20 in page 714 Geoffrey Tillotson, “Rasselas and the Persian Tales,” Essays in Criticism and Research (Cambridge, 1942), pp. 111–116.

Note 21 in page 714 See Conant, pp. 267–283, for a list and approximate dates of the “more important oriental tales published in English” before 1759.

Note 22 in page 715 See Tillotson, p. 112, for information about the date of Philips' translation; it may have been done in 1714. Another translation, by “Dr. King, and several other Hands,” was definitely published in 1714. My quotations are taken from the 1783 ed. The Novelists' Magazine, Vol. xiii (London, 1784).

Note 23 in page 716 Tillotson, p. 114. Moreover, no evidence has been produced to show that Johnson had read the Tales before—or even after—he wrote Rasselas. Tillotson acknowledges that “he does not seem to have mentioned the ‘Persian Tales’ in writing or conversation, except in the ‘Life of Philips,‘ when he wrote bibliographically of the book in a way suggesting that he had handled it.” The passage Tillotson refers to reads: “[Philips] was reduced to translate the Persian Tales for Tonson, for which he was afterwards reproached, with this addition of contempt, that he worked for half-a-crown. The book is divided into many sections, for each of which, if he received half-a-crown, his reward, as writers then were paid, was very liberal; but half-a-crown had a mean sound.” Certainly, this comment tells us little about the date or the nature of Johnson's acquaintance with the Tales.

Note 24 in page 717 The Arabian Nights, the Persian Tales (exclusive of the group in which Bedreddin figures), the Peruvian Tales, and the Chinese Tales all include stories which contain one or more of the partial similarities listed below in the text.