Chapter 3 - Johnson and Renaissance Humanism

Summary

This chapter discusses an underexplored and relatively unappreciated, but essential, aspect of Samuel Johnson’s writing and thinking: his intellectual relationship with Renaissance humanism. Looking at representative figures such as Sir Thomas More, Sir Francis Bacon, and Michel de Montaigne, Lee explores the influence these writers and thinkers had upon Johnson, describing his lifelong interest in the kinds of scholarly works for which they were known (dictionary, scholarly edition, biography, satire, skeptical essay) and also detecting their presence in Johnson’s moral and philosophical commitment to an “active” life, and even in his very prose style. In so doing so, the chapter concludes that Johnson embraced Renaissance humanism while simultaneously adapting it into a project relevant and responsive to the demands of his own day and age – and, indeed, suggesting a model for our own potential humanism today.