"Lucidus Ordo"

THE DOCTRINE of poetic generality received one of its most pointed and consistent statements in Samuel Johnson's criticism, and modern scholars have analyzed this statement in hope of defining the basic outlines both of the doctrine itself and of Johnson's critical standards. A durable tradition among such interpretations holds that Johnson did not a rule . . . associate his truth with a right use of fiction or ... with a certain quality of imagination.' Detached from discussions of imagination, poetic generality has been described as Platonic, religious, rationalistic, or deplorable in its dessicated abstractness.2 On the contrary, it seems clear that Johnson regarded the lack of generality as a grave fault in the imaginative structure of literary art, a fault pointing directly to a defect in imaginative vision, the activity of the poet's mind. To define Johnson's concept of generality we must work with his assumptions concerning mental operation. A consensus of critics has indicated John Locke as the most probable source for Johnson's basic empiricism. Significantly, the philosophical issue of general ideas and general words was an important and controversial matter for Locke and his followers

Generality · Psychotherapist · Computer Science · Literature: history, themes, analysis · Poetry Analysis and Criticism · Psychology · Rhetoric and Communication Studies