Boswell's Enlightenment, by Robert Zaretsky
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Boswell's Enlightenment, by Robert Zaretsky
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Throughout his life, James Boswell struggled to fashion a clear account of himself, but try as he might, he could not reconcile the truths of his era with those of his religious upbringing. Boswell’s Enlightenment examines the conflicting credos of reason and faith, progress and tradition that pulled Boswell, like so many eighteenth-century Europeans, in opposing directions. In the end, the life of the man best known for writing Samuel Johnson’s biography was something of a patchwork affair. As Johnson himself understood: “That creature was its own tormentor, and I believe its name was BOSWELL.”
Few periods in Boswell’s life better crystallize this internal turmoil than 1763–1765, the years of his Grand Tour and the focus of Robert Zaretsky’s thrilling intellectual adventure. From the moment Boswell sailed for Holland from the port of Harwich, leaving behind on the beach his newly made friend Dr. Johnson, to his return to Dover from Calais a year and a half later, the young Scot was intent on not just touring historic and religious sites but also canvassing the views of the greatest thinkers of the age. In his relentless quizzing of Voltaire and Rousseau, Hume and Johnson, Paoli and Wilkes on topics concerning faith, the soul, and death, he was not merely a celebrity-seeker but―for want of a better term―a truth-seeker. Zaretsky reveals a life more complex and compelling than suggested by the label “Johnson’s biographer,” and one that 250 years later registers our own variations of mind.
Boswell's Enlightenment, by Robert Zaretsky- Amazon Sales Rank: #872211 in Books
- Brand: Zaretsky, Robert
- Published on: 2015-03-23
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 8.50" h x .90" w x 5.80" l, .0 pounds
- Binding: Hardcover
- 288 pages
Review The key theme of Robert Zaretsky’s splendid new book on James Boswell is that his life was a roaming drama of self-discovery… Boswell’s Enlightenment is thus about the art of living. Boswell’s interest for the historian lies not with the originality of his thought―there was none―but as an example of someone who struggled, Zaretsky shows, ‘to bend his person to certain philosophical ends.’ Hume, Johnson, Rousseau and Voltaire were asked to help him divine what those ends might be. Zaretsky’s elegantly written book, then, stands alongside a growing literature―including the works of Pierre Hadot (Philosophy as a Way of Life) and Alexander Nehemas (The Art of Living)–that renders the history of philosophy not as an academic pursuit, but as something wrought in pursuit of the common good. (Gavin Jacobson Times Literary Supplement 2015-10-09)Zaretsky’s buoyant and rigorous ‘intellectual adventure’ is a successful attempt to place the writer within the broad tapestry of the European Enlightenment…In Zaretsky’s book, we see the effect of one great mind upon another, again and again, and thus we see the evolution of Boswell’s dazzling prose style. (Andrew O’Hagan New York Review of Books 2015-06-04)Enthralling…Boswell’s Enlightenment proves that the world’s greatest biographer makes a fascinating subject in his own right. (Josh Emmons Los Angeles Review of Books 2015-05-13)During his life, Boswell was known more for his associations than for his accomplishments, but it’s time, historian Robert Zaretsky thinks, to give him his moment in the spotlight…Zaretsky’s telling is as much an intellectual history as it is a coming-of-age tale, though one gets the sense that Boswell never quite came of age… Zaretsky’s account of this conflicted man is a sympathetic, fluid, and very enjoyable read. We see a man in search not so much of wisdom as of seekers of wisdom. As much as he tried, Boswell never became an intellectual equal with the great thinkers of his day, but as an observer of them (and of himself) he had no peer. (David Nolan First Things 2015-08-01)Entertaining… [Zaretsky] put[s] Boswell forward as, among other things, a harbinger of our own day, a living symbol of a transition from the high-minded ideals of a more pure intellectual world to the self-centered obsessions of day-to-day reality. (Steven Donoghue Christian Science Monitor 2015-03-25)Engaging…Boswell’s Enlightenment is a readable, smart, accessible introduction to a self-absorbed but likable young man who reminds us the Age of Enlightenment was also the Age of Exuberance. (Fritz Lanham Houston Chronicle 2015-04-11)James Boswell, best known as Samuel Johnson’s biographer, was a lifelong seeker of truth. He struggled to put together his Calvinist religious heritage with the insights and perspectives of the Enlightenment. From 1763 to 1765 he toured Europe not just to see the historic sites but to encounter some of its greatest living thinkers, among them Rousseau and Voltaire. Zaretsky adroitly chronicles Boswell’s intellectual journey and introduces the reader to the varieties of 18th-century Enlightenment. Boswell’s struggles remain with us―over the relationship between faith and reason, the nature of human liberty and equality, the duties of citizenship, the role and limits of the state, and what constitutes the good life. (Christian Century 2015-03-20)Zaretsky believes Boswell was an exceptional talent, notwithstanding his weaknesses, and certainly worthy of our attention. Glossing several periods of Boswell’s life but closely examining his grand tour of the Continent (1763-1765), Zaretsky elevates Boswell’s station, repairs Boswell’s literary reputation, and corrects a longstanding underestimation, calling attention to his complicated and curious relationship to the Enlightenment, a movement or milieu that engulfed him without necessarily defining him…Bristling with the animated, ambulatory prose of the old style of literary and historical criticism, the kind that English professors disdain but educated readers enjoy and appreciate. (Allen Mendenhall Liberty Unbound 2015-06-22)James Boswell (1740‐1795) comes to life in Zaretsky’s recounting of his European grand tour in the mid‐18th‐century… Zaretsky introduces the Enlightenment greats who taught and molded Boswell. The vast store of knowledge our traveler absorbed in so few years makes for truly enlightening reading… This wonderful rendering of Boswell digs deep into his probing, enquiring life and the fast friends he made at every turn. (Kirkus Reviews (starred review) 2015-01-01)This sparkling work is a partial biography of one of the 18th century’s most arresting figures―someone often taken to be emblematic of that intellectually critical era. Zaretsky sees James Boswell―known for ‘his oddness, his youth, and his melancholy’―as embodying the Enlightenment’s many conflicting currents and torn by them all. Seeking to escape from conflicts between the flesh and Protestant religiosity, and between the ancient and modern, the young Scot sought and gained the acquaintance and counsel, much of it unsettling to him, of some of the age’s great figures―Samuel Johnson, Voltaire, Rousseau, David Hume, John Wilkes, and Pascal Paoli―in a famous two-year tour of the Continent. Boswell’s earnest search for answers to life’s bewildering puzzles continues to fascinate. Zaretsky brilliantly, sometimes movingly, adds to that fascination… So convincing are Zaretsky’s observations, so sure his touch. (Publishers Weekly 2015-01-26)In this beautifully written account, Robert Zaretsky plays Boswell to Boswell, as the young Scot goes in search of Europe’s great thinkers―and in the process discovers his own calling. Part biography, part history of ideas, it makes for a thrilling intellectual journey. (James Shapiro, Columbia University)Zaretsky has written an engrossing study of James Boswell, the renowned biographer of Samuel Johnson and the equally famous diarist…There must have been something irresistible about Boswell’s personality for such a young man to have been able to secure the attentions of these men, not to mention the close friendship of literary titan Samuel Johnson. A fascinating character study, Boswell’s Enlightenment helps readers understand what that something was. It is also the story of Boswell’s struggle to reconcile his strict Calvinist upbringing with the ideas of the Enlightenment and with his tempestuous impulses and literary ambition. (J. Hoffman Choice 2015-09-01)Robert Zaretsky’s excellent book provides a wealth of information about Enlightenment thought, all of it brought to life in the mind and imagination of that irrepressible Scot, James Boswell…Boswell’s Enlightenment is also the reader’s enlightenment. The book surveys the major ideas of this period’s thinkers, from luminaries like Johnson and Hume, Voltaire and Rousseau, to somewhat lesser lights like Adam Smith and Hugh Blair, Montesquieu and Diderot…The book deserves the highest praise. (D. T. Siebert The Key Reporter 2015-12-02)
About the Author Robert Zaretsky is Professor of French History at the University of Houston.
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13 of 15 people found the following review helpful. A qualified endorsement By j a haverstick There is no lack of books and commentaries on Boswell, starting with the definitive 2 vol. Frederick Pottle set . There is no exaggerating the fascination of his character, his candor in his writings and in his diaries is, I think, not to be equaled in English. Unlike the writers of the 20th century confessional school, Boswell is totally unstudied. Having read nearly all that he wrote, I feel as if I know him better than most friends and a lot of family. His life problems are common to us all, family, money, spouse, career and sex. I would only limit it by saying it is the life of a male, not a female. In politics, he was embarrassingly sycophantic re: the royals and much of the aristocracy, yet he had a strong, almost radical, empathy for the ordinary person, as evinced in his legal defense of the poor and mistreated. Should there be anyone considering this book who has not read deeply in Boswell, go to it. Again, the clarity of his self revelation is almost unbelievable.The theme of this study is that Boswell, in addition to a domineering jerk of a father, a long suffering wife, a serious drinking problem, guilt about his children, general inferiority-complex (thanks, Dad) and a wastrel’s spending habits, suffered deeply from intellectual angst occasioned by his Scot/Calvinist “faith” and the modern ideas blooming in the enlightenment, many of whose key figures he ardently courted. Screwed Voltaire’s mistress (partner) whilst escorting her to England and muscled in on Hume’s dying days with a couple bottles of wine, for instance. Johnson, by the way, suffered the same angst, tho an Anglican.For those already well read in Boswell beyond the Life of Johnson, this book will seem slight. Additionally to being rather superficial on Boswell, the supporting cast - Hume, Voltaire, etc. - are sketchily drawn. And one could hardly expect a grounding on the thought of them from such a book, of course. On the other hand, if you have read and enjoyed the Life And are looking for a little more information on Boswell, this is a good place to start. It is an easy and quick read. I’d repeat, however, that the best place to encounter Boswell is in the journals themselves. Read one, say the London Journal, and you may be hooked. They’re all available new or used at reasonable prices on Amazon or Addall.
7 of 7 people found the following review helpful. Inspired Travels with Boswell By George Cotkin Robert Zaretsky moves James Boswell out from under the brilliant shadow of Samuel Johnson and places him at the heart of the Enlightenment. Boswell was a fascinating character, traveling about Europe and literally knocking unannounced on the doors of the famous, Hume, Rousseau, Voltaire, and many others. Boswell was a man of depths and contradictions, as Zaretsky expertly demonstrates, drilled in Calvinism as youth but wandering around Europe in search of sin; upholding a religious sensibility but flirting deeply with doubt; living a full life yet fretting constantly about death. While Zaretsky wisely does not make the case for Boswell as a major Enlightenment figure, he employs him brilliantly to tease forth the varieties of the Enlightenment experience. Readers will find Zaretsky's prose elegant and his discussions of ideas nicely accessible without sacrificing anything. As a study of a fascinating fellow and of the reach of the Enlightenment, this book is unparalleled.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful. Poorly written but entertaining By Jeffrey Rubard James Boswell -- the 18th century Scots writer most famous for his immense biography of his friend Samuel Johnson -- is someone whose attitudes and observations still speak to our present. Unfortunately, Romance language professor Robert Zaretsky tries too hard to make Boswell contemporary: he doesn't quite describe Rousseau's common-law wife Therese Levasseur as "swiping right" for Boswell, but that's about the feel of his book *Boswell's Enlightenment*.Since Zaretsky is unsure of his audience, there is much amateurish stage-setting regarding 18th century Britain and not enough information about the book's main topic, the youthful Boswell's "grand tour" of Europe which had him meeting up with the famous *lumieres* Voltaire and Rousseau. Anglophiles who have read the *Life of Johnson* cover to cover (it takes a while) would still not know about the encounters Boswell had with the Continental elites, and the background on 18th-century continental Europe (as well as the Corsican General Paoli, who figures fairly prominently in Boswell's book) is valuable, but the treatment of what we have been instructed to call the "British Enlightenment" is ham-handed: Johnson is present as comic relief only, presented as a distant second in influence on Boswell to the more colorful John Wilkes. Discussion of the Scots and British character of that time is halting at best, and at the end of the book we still have not been given a convincing explanation of why Boswell was famous in the first place.As a "special study" it's okay; as a chronicle of a great literary figure and his times it leaves much to be desired.
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