The History of Rasselas: Prince of Abissinia (Dover Literature: Literary Fiction) - Softcover

Johnson, Samuel

Softcover

ISBN 10: 048644094X ISBN 13: 9780486440941

Publisher: Dover Publications, 2005

Synopsis

Simply written, funny, and compulsively readable, this fine little book has been heralded as one of the finest examples of English prose and offers a compelling glimpse of Samuel Johnson’s moral views. Dashed out over the course of a single week to pay for his mother’s funeral, Johnson’s only novel was the outcome of a lifetime’s thoughts and experiences.
A philosophical romance tracing the pilgrimage of an African prince and his companions to Egypt, Rasselas ponders a number of subjects — romantic love, flights of imagination, the great discoveries of science, and speculations about the meaning of happiness — all of which, Johnson implies, encourage man with false hopes and unrealistic estimates of what life has to offer.
Directed specifically against eighteenth-century optimism and, more generally, against all simple formulas for achieving happiness, Rasselas has often been compared with Voltaire’s Candide — which was published only a few weeks before Johnson’s work. Both novels have deservedly attained the status of classics.

About this title

From the Back Cover

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

Thomas Keymer is Chancellor Jackman Professor of English at the University of Toronto. He co-edited The Cambridge Companion to English Literature from 1740 to 1830.

Edition details

• Publisher: Dover Publications
• Publication date: 2005
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 048644094X
• ISBN 13: 9780486440941
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 112