The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia

Samuel Johnson

ISBN 10: 1551116014 / ISBN 13: 9781551116013

Published by Broadview Press, 2008

About this Item

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Seller Inventory # ZEV.1551116014.G

Bibliographic Details

• Title: The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia
• Publisher: Broadview Press
• Publication Date: 2008
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1551116014
• ISBN 13: 9781551116013
• Binding: Soft cover
• Condition: good

About this title

Synopsis

In Samuel Johnson’s classic philosophical tale, the prince and princess of Abissinia escape their confinement in the Happy Valley and conduct an ultimately unsuccessful search for a choice of life that leads to happiness. Johnson uses the conventions of the Oriental tale to depict a universal restlessness of desire. The excesses of Orientalism―its superfluous splendours, its despotic tyrannies, its riotous pleasures―cannot satisfy us. His tale challenges us by showing the problem of finding happiness to be insoluble while still dignifying our quest for fulfillment.

The appendices to this Broadview edition include reviews and biographies, selections from the sequel Dinarbas (1790), and the complete text of Elizabeth Pope Whately’s The Second Part of the History of Rasselas (1835). Selections from Johnson’s translation of the travel narrative A Voyage to Abyssinia, as well as his Oriental tales in the Rambler, are also included, along with another popular tale, Joseph Addison’s “The Vision of Mirzah,” and selections from Lady Mary Wortley Montagu’s Turkish Embassy Letters.

About the Author

Jessica Richard is Associate Professor of English at Wake Forest University.