Reading Samuel Johnson "anew": Hester Thrale's private, social, and public views of Samuel Johnson.
Item
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Title
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Reading Samuel Johnson "anew": Hester Thrale's private, social, and public views of Samuel Johnson.
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Identifier
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AAI9959175
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identifier
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9959175
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Creator
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DeLuca, Anthony Louis.
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Contributor
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Adviser: Marlies K. Danziger
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Date
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2000
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Language
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English
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Publisher
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City University of New York.
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Subject
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Literature, English
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Abstract
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This dissertation is a study of Hester Thrale's private, social and public writings about and to Samuel Johnson. Thrale is cast as a "reader" of Johnson, who recorded her "responses" to him in her private diaries and journals, in her social letters, and in her public writings Anecodotes of the late Samuel Johnson, LL.D., During the Last Twenty Years of His Life, and Letters to and from the Late Samuel Johnson, LL.D. In particular, I focus on the years 1766 to 1788. Thrale's reading process of Johnson was one of increasing dissatisfaction. It was this that caused Thrale to end her twenty-year friendship with Johnson, long before her well-known break with him in 1784 when she married Gabriel Piozzi. Through the insights of reader-response theory and by an examination of the private, social, and public dimensions of Thrale's writing on Johnson, this dissertation attempts to present a more complete picture of how Thrale viewed Johnson as a man and as a friend.;Of particular interest in this dissertation is how Thrale's expectations as a reader of Johnson continued to narrow because of Johnson's resistance to her attempts to cross over from the social to the private sphere in their friendship and because of his attempts to control how she read him. These two aspects of Johnson's friendship for Thrale became increasingly obvious to her over the course of her twenty-year friendship with Johnson, especially after Henry Thrale's death when Thrale chose to pursue happiness by beginning a new life with Gabriel Piozzi in Italy. Thrale clearly loved Johnson and always respected him, but she would not let Johnson control how she read herself in the private, social, and public spheres of her life, nor would she let him define her for literary posterity.
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Type
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dissertation
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Source
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PQT Legacy CUNY.xlsx
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degree
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Ph.D.
