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" The business of a poet," said Imlac, " is to examine, \ not the individual, but the species ; to remark general properties and large appearances : he does not number the streaks of the tulip, or describe the different shades in the verdure of the forest. "
The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D.: With Murphy's Essay - Page 186
by Samuel Johnson - 1825
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Truth and Convention in the Middle Ages: Rhetoric, Representation and Reality

Ruth Morse - 1991 - 336 pages
...qualities. We may think of them as being like Imlac's definition of poetry in Rasselas, chapter 10: 'The business of a poet, said Imlac, is to examine, not the individual, but the species; ... he does not number the streaks of the tulip, or describe the different shades of verdure of the...
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Truth and Convention in the Middle Ages: Rhetoric, Representation and Reality

Ruth Morse - 1991 - 336 pages
...chapter i0: 'The business of a poet, said Imlac, is to examine, not the individuaL but the species; ... he does not number the streaks of the tulip, or describe the different shades of verdure of the forest." This is, of course, not Johnson himself speaking, but his sober philosopher,...
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At Home in Time: Forms of Neo-Augustanism in Modern English Poetry

Patrick Deane - 1994 - 270 pages
...must be considered proper matter of poetry. Eliot quotes Imlac in Rasselas: "The business of a poet is to examine, not the individual, but the species;...the different shades in the verdure of the forest ..." (179) Interestingly, Eliot's sympathetic quotation of these lines coincides historically with...
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The Political Theory of Painting from Reynolds to Hazlitt: The Body of the ...

John Barrell - 1995 - 384 pages
...tenth chapter of Rasselas. For all its familiarity, it will be helpful to have an excerpt before us: The business of a poet, said Imlac, is to examine,...or describe the different shades in the verdure of a forest. He is to exhibit in his portraits of nature such prominent and striking features, as recal...
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Only for the Eye of a Friend: The Poems of Annis Boudinot Stockton

Annis Boudinot Stockton - 1995 - 366 pages
...the poet," said Imlac, Johnson's poet-character in The Prince of Abyssinia (later called Rasselas), "is to examine, not the individual, but the species;...remark general properties and large appearances": Samuel Johnson, The Princeof Abyssinia, a Tale, in Two Volumes (London: R. and J. Dodsley, 1759), 1:...
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Australian Poetry: Romanticism and Negativity

Paul Kane - 1996 - 268 pages
...famous dictum continued to hold sway. 'The business of the poet,' says Imlac in Johnson's Rasselas, 'is to examine, not the individual, but the species; to remark general properties and large appearance; he does not number the streaks of the tulip.'2" The early Australian poets were after what...
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The Cambridge Companion to Samuel Johnson

Greg Clingham - 1997 - 290 pages
...reflects on, these initiatives, discoveries and arguments. "The business of a poet," says Imlac, famously, "is to examine, not the individual, but the species;...appearances: he does not number the streaks of the tulip" (Rasselas, p. 43). While Johnson is not identified with Imlac's ideals of Enlightenment criticism,...
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Samuel Johnson and the Culture of Property

Kevin Hart - 1999 - 254 pages
...be such a thing as a biographical poem. In Rasselas Imlac tells us that 'the business of a poet ... is to examine, not the individual, but the species;...the different shades in the verdure of the forest' (Yale, xv1, 43). While taking this in, we may remember another passage that begins in precisely the...
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Picturing Imperial Power: Colonial Subjects in Eighteenth-century British ...

Beth Fowkes Tobin - 1999 - 324 pages
...echoes what his good friend Dr. Johnson wrote in Rasselas about the role of the poet, whose business "is to examine, not the individual, but the species;...remark general properties and large appearances." Dr. Johnson's Imlac describes how a poet must remove himself from the local and the specific so that...
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The World of Mathematics, Volume 4

James Roy Newman - 2000 - 486 pages
...making any notable advance. The business of a poet is to examine not the individual but the species; lo remark general properties and large appearances. He...streaks of the tulip, or describe the different shades of verdore of the forest; he is to exhibit . . . such prominent and striking featores as recall the...
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