The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia
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The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia, often abbreviated to Rasselas, is a novella about happiness by Samuel Johnson. The book's original working title was “The Choice of Life".[1] He wrote the piece to help support his seriously ill mother with an intended completion date of January 22, 1759 (the eve of his mothers death).[1] The book was first published in April 1759 in England. Johnson is believed to have received a total of £75 for the copyright. The first American edition followed in 1768. The title page of this edition carried a quotation, inserted by the publisher Robert Bell, from La Rochefoucauld: “The labour or Exercise of the Body, freeth Man from the Pains of the Mind; and this constitutes the Happiness of the Poor”.[1]
Johnson was influenced by the vogue for exotic locations. He had translated A Voyage to Abyssinia by Jeronimo Lobo in 1735 and used it as the basis for what was described as a "philosophical romance". Ten years prior to writing Rasselas he published “The Vanity of Human Wishes” in which he describes the inevitable defeat of worldly ambition. It was considered by early readers as a work of philosophical and practical importance and critics often remark on the difficulty of classifying Rasselas as a novel.[1] Johnson was a staunch opponent of slavery, revered by abolitionists, and Rasselas became a name adopted by emancipated slaves.[1]
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[edit] Overview
While the story is thematically similar to Candide by Voltaire — both concern young men traveling in the company of honored teachers, encountering and examining human suffering in an attempt to determine the root of happiness — their root concerns are distinctly different. Voltaire was very directly satirizing the widely-read philosophical work by Gottfried Leibniz, particularly the Theodicee, in which Leibniz asserts that the world, no matter how we may perceive it, is necessarily the "best of all possible worlds", whereas the question Rasselas confronts most directly is whether or not humanity is essentially capable of attaining happiness. Writing as a devout Christian, Johnson makes through his characters no blanket attacks on the viability of a religious response to this question, as Voltaire does, and while the story is in places light and humorous, it is not a piece of satire, as is Candide.
[edit] Plot
The plot concerns Rasselas, son of the King of Abyssinia (modern day Ethiopia), who leaves his home in company with his sister, Nekayah, and a philosopher, Imlac, to discover the secret of a happy life. His observation of other kinds of people eventually leads to the conclusion that there is no easy path to happiness, and he returns to Abyssinia along with his companions. One of the more famous quotations from this story is of the character Imlac:
| “ | That the dead are seen no more ... I will not undertake to maintain, against the concurrent and unvaried testimony of all ages and all nations. There is no people, rude or learned, among whom apparitions of the dead are not related and believed. This opinion, which perhaps prevails as far as human nature is diffused, could become universal only by its truth; those that never heard of one another would not have agreed in a tale which nothing but experience can make credible. That it is doubted by single cavillers can very little weaken the general evidence; and some who deny it with their tongues confess it by their fears. | ” |
[edit] Influences
Irvin Ehrenpesis sees an aged Johnson's reflecting on lost youth in the character of Rasselas who is exiled from Happy Valley. Rasselas' has also been viewed as a reflection of Johnson's melancholia projected on to the wider world, particularly at the time of his mother's death. Hester Piozzi saw in part Johnson in the character of Imlac who is rejected in his courtship by a class conscious social superior.[1] Thomas Keymer sees beyond the conventional Roman à clef interpretations a work that reflects the wider geo-political world in the year of publication (1759): the year in which “Britain became master of the world”.[1] Rasselas is seen to express an hostility to the rising imperialism of his day and who rejects stereotypical “orientalist” viewpoints that justified colonialism. Johnson himself was regarded as a prophet who opposed imperialism, who described the Anglo-French war for America as a dispute between two thieves over the proceeds of a robbery.[1]
[edit] Legacy
[edit] Literature
Rasselas is mentioned numerous times in later notable literature.
Mentioned in Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë - Helen Burns reads it.
Also mentioned in Cranford by Elizabeth Gaskell - Captain Brown (who is reading 'The Pickwick Papers') denigrates Rasselas, thus offending Miss Jenkyns (who is a great admirer of Johnson).
Rasselas is read by Hepzibah Pyncheon in Nathaniel Hawthorne's The House of the Seven Gables.
Mentioned in Little Women by Louisa May Alcott - is dropped on the floor by Jo March as she talks to Mr Laurence about his Grandson Laurie's prank.
Mentioned in Middlemarch by George Eliot - is enjoyed by Lydgate as a child, along with Gulliver's Travels, the dictionary, and the Bible.
[edit] Locations
The community of Rasselas, Pennsylvania, located in Elk County, was named after Rasselas Wilcox Brown, whose father, Isaac Brown, Jr., was fond of Johnson's story.[2]
[edit] See also
[edit] Footnotes
- ^ a b c d e f g h "Samuel Johnson's message to America", Thomas Keymer, edited version of intro to Oxford World's Classic edition of Rasselas pub June 2009, Times Literary Supplement March 25 2009[1]
- ^ Brown, Issac Brownell (1922). Genealogy of Rasselas Wilcox Brown and Mary Potter Brownell Brown, their descendants and ancestral lines. Harrisburg, Pennsylvania: Evangelical Publishing Co.. pp. 13. http://www.archive.org/details/genealogyofrasse00brow.
[edit] External links
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Samuel Johnson: The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia on Wikisource - The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia at Project Gutenberg
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