Samuel Johnson

Question 1

Preface to Dictionary: Johnson born

Answer 1

1709

Question 2

Preface to Dictionary: Johnson dies

Answer 2

1784

Question 3

Preface to Dictionary: science, infinite

Answer 3

Cultivation of science leads to lngstc change; but praises e.g. Bacon & Boyle

Question 4

Preface to Dictionary: hierarchy, order, cosmic thought

Answer 4

Words are the parts and England is the whole; leisure classes and reading

Question 5

Preface to Dictionary: history, memory,

Answer 5

Bacon & an Edenic language (see quotes)

Question 6

Preface to Dictionary: language

Answer 6

Bacon & an Edenic language (see quotes)

Question 7

Preface to Dictionary: nostalgia

Answer 7

Bacon & an Edenic language (see quotes); tone of the whole piece

Question 8

Preface to Dictionary: imperial vantage

Answer 8

Disdain for the mingling of languages

Question 9

Preface to Dictionary: mingling

Answer 9

Imperial vantage; disdain for mingling center and margins

Question 10

Preface to Dictionary: centres, margins, periphery

Answer 10

Imperial vantage; disdain for mingling center and margins

Question 11

Preface to Dictionary: Yeats

Answer 11

“Things fall apart, the center cannot hold”

Question 12

Preface to Dictionary: community

Answer 12

Classed societies > leisure > learning, reading, lngstic change

Question 13

Preface to Dictionary: leisure, upper classes

Answer 13

Classed societies > leisure > learning, reading, lngstic change

Question 14

Preface to Dictionary: time

Answer 14

Leisure time; reading. Johnson wants to slow change.

Question 15

Preface to Dictionary: commerce

Answer 15

All-agora; commerce with strangers cited as the problem. The center is becoming the periphery–a move from self to other.

Question 16

Preface to Dictionary: genre

Answer 16

Preface, apology, manifesto-essay

Question 17

Preface to Dictionary: tone and style

Answer 17

Amiable: he has “parental fondness” for it; acquiescent to inevitable change. Just wants to slow it. Nostalgic.

Question 18

Preface to Dictionary: content of dictionary

Answer 18

40,000 words, ~114,000 illustrative quotations

Question 19

Preface to Dictionary: external causes of linguistic change

Answer 19

Commerce w strangers; translation

Question 20

Preface to Dictionary: commerce w/ strangers

Answer 20

external cause of linguistic change. Leads to accmdtng and then mingled dialect

Question 21

Preface to Dictionary: translation

Answer 21

imparts native (foreign) idiom. It is the most comprehensive & mischievous innvtn

Question 22

Preface to Dictionary: internal causes for linguistic change

Answer 22

Polishing of arts; cultivation of sciences; copiousness of speech; vicissitudes of fashion; tropes of poetry; verbal changes; popular (but illiterate) writers; increased politeness

Question 23

Preface to Dictionary: polishing of the arts; refinement

Answer 23

An internal cause of change. (reading books, etc.) & classing by subordination (one part of community sustained by labor of other; i.e. leisure)

Question 24

Preface to Dictionary: cultivation of science

Answer 24

Internal cause of change. deflects words from original sense

Question 25

Preface to Dictionary: copiousness of language

Answer 25

Internal cause of change. capricious choice

Question 26

Preface to Dictionary: poetic tropes

Answer 26

Internal cause of change. metaphor will become the current sense

Question 27

Preface to Dictionary: vicissitudes of fashion

Answer 27

Internal cause of change. enforce new signification, or extend old

Question 28

Preface to Dictionary: popular writers

Answer 28

Internal cause of change. The illiterate ones use words w “colloquial licentiousness”

Question 29

Preface to Dictionary: we must “retard…

Answer 29

“what we cannot repel”

Question 30

Preface to Dictionary: J hopes dictionary grants foreign nations and distant ages

Answer 30

access to

Question 31

Preface to Dictionary:

Answer 31

“the propagators of knowledge” and the “teachers of truth,” e.g. wants to “add celebrity to Bacon, to Hooker, to Milton, and to Boyle.”

Question 32

Preface to Dictionary: manuscript publication in general

Answer 32

• 1st English dictionary
• Great commercial strategy: everyone needs
• J commissioned for project in 1746, when he’s still unknown
• J planned 3 yrs for project; took 9
• Had only 6 part-time assistants
• 2 large folio vols

Question 33

Preface to Dictionary: commercial strategy

Answer 33

Every learned person has to have the dictionary

Question 34

Preface to Dictionary: when Johnson was commissioned for the project, he was still

Answer 34

unknown

Question 35

Preface to Dictionary: Johnson planned on spending __ years on the project; it took him __

Answer 35

3; 9

Question 36

Preface to Dictionary: Johnson completed the dictionary with only

Answer 36

6 part-time assistants

Question 37

Preface to Dictionary: published in 2

Answer 37

large folio volumes

Question 38

Preface to Dictionary: continental context

Answer 38

Italian & French academies had dictionaries; w/o authority, English can change rapidly

Question 39

Preface to Dictionary: Englishness, nationalism

Answer 39

Italian & French academies had dictionaries; w/o authority, English can change rapidly

Question 40

Preface to Dictionary: competition

Answer 40

Italian & French academies had dictionaries; w/o authority, English can change rapidly

Question 41

Preface to Dictionary: heritage, tradition, English lit

Answer 41

Italian & French academies had dictionaries; w/o authority, English can change rapidly

Question 42

Preface to Dictionary: a particular source of pride for J

Answer 42

that it’s written w little assistance from the learned or patronage of the great, and not while he’s in an academy but beset with distractions, sickness, etc.

Question 43

Preface to Dictionary: signs of the class Johnson is advocating for

Answer 43

Middle: proud that he didn’t receive patronage from the great, yet upholding the middle (and upper) class’s leisure privileges. Hard work, independence.

Question 44

Preface to Dictionary: Pope

Answer 44

Essay on Criticism: “Our sons their fathers’ failing language see, / And such as Chaucer is, shall Dryden be.”

Question 45

Preface to Dictionary: important intertextualities (just name four figures w/o explaining)

Answer 45

Pope, Swift, Yeats, Garner

Question 46

Preface to Dictionary: Swift

Answer 46

“A Proposal for Correcting, Improving, and Ascertaining the English Tongue”

Question 47

Preface to Dictionary: legacy in usage

Answer 47

Discuss Garner’s Modern American Usage; prescriptivist and descriptivist linguistics.

Question 48

Preface to Dictionary: why can’t the change be stopped forcibly? (using a quote)

Answer 48

“Sounds are too volatile and subtle for legal restraints”; foolish pride to try “to enchain syllables, and to lash the wind”

Question 49

Preface to Dictionary: “the great pest of speech is…”

Answer 49

“frequency of translation”

Question 50

Preface to Dictionary: quote about tongues and governments

Answer 50

“Tongues, like governments, have a natural tendency to degeneration”

Question 51

Preface to Dictionary: talking point (commerce)

Answer 51

A point of new understanding (albeit nostalgic, resistant) of commerce. Allegory of necessity becoming multicultural

Question 52

Preface to Dictionary: mutability, death, preservation, corpses, eternal life

Answer 52

preservation, corpses, eternal life; Elixir impossible > embalming fluid incapable > mutability

Question 53

Preface to Dictionary: language as body (best talking point)

Answer 53

England the whole & language the parts; can’t use elixir or embalming fluid; translation a “pest”; “tongues, like governments”

Question 54

Preface to Dictionary: best talking points (just headings)

Answer 54

Language as body; commerce and the center/periphery slide