{"title":"Rasselas: The Enigma and the \"Agile Music\"","authors":"Mark Loveridge","doi":"10.1353/sip.2024.a923968","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Abstract:</p><p>This essay reads Samuel Johnson’s <i>Rasselas</i> (1759) against the background of negative or apophatic theology and argues that it is unique among Johnson’s works in expressing a sense of life as an <i>enigma</i>. The silent or hidden symbol of the story is the Giza Sphinx, one of the foundational symbols of such theology: the second-century Church Father Clement of Alexandria, whose works Johnson owned, associated the enigmas of the Hebrew Bible with the mystery of the Egyptian sphinxes. More widely, <i>Rasselas</i> contains absent objects and symbols, enigmatic silences and responses, hidden images and paradoxes, self-defeating dualisms and habits of style, apophatic philosophy (“philosophy can tell no more”), and an enigmatic conclusion (“<i>nothing</i>”). The apophatic quality is embodied in the text through what Jorge Luis Borges refers to as <i>Rasselas</i>’s “agile music,” the subtle, flexible management of narrative voices, which generates a distinctive kind of attention in the reader.</p></p>","PeriodicalId":45500,"journal":{"name":"STUDIES IN PHILOLOGY","volume":"103 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.2000,"publicationDate":"2024-04-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"STUDIES IN PHILOLOGY","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1353/sip.2024.a923968","RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"0","JCRName":"LANGUAGE & LINGUISTICS","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Abstract:
This essay reads Samuel Johnson’s Rasselas (1759) against the background of negative or apophatic theology and argues that it is unique among Johnson’s works in expressing a sense of life as an enigma. The silent or hidden symbol of the story is the Giza Sphinx, one of the foundational symbols of such theology: the second-century Church Father Clement of Alexandria, whose works Johnson owned, associated the enigmas of the Hebrew Bible with the mystery of the Egyptian sphinxes. More widely, Rasselas contains absent objects and symbols, enigmatic silences and responses, hidden images and paradoxes, self-defeating dualisms and habits of style, apophatic philosophy (“philosophy can tell no more”), and an enigmatic conclusion (“nothing”). The apophatic quality is embodied in the text through what Jorge Luis Borges refers to as Rasselas’s “agile music,” the subtle, flexible management of narrative voices, which generates a distinctive kind of attention in the reader.
期刊介绍:
Founded in 1903, Studies in Philology addresses scholars in a wide range of disciplines, though traditionally its strength has been English Medieval and Renaissance studies. SIP publishes articles on British literature before 1900 and on relations between British literature and works in the Classical, Romance, and Germanic Languages.