A Dictionary of the English Language.
- Author/Editor
- Johnson, Samuel.
- Title
- A Dictionary of the English Language.
- Published
- Johnson, Samuel. A Dictionary of the English Language. London: J. & P. Knapton, 1755, n.p.
- Review
- Johnson prints CA Prologue 499-528 in the prefatory material to his dictionary, the section titled "The History of the English Language" and calls Gower "the father of our poetry." He includes biographical matter a brief literary assessment, describing Gower as the first author "who can be properly said to have written 'English'" and disagreeing with John Dryden's view that Chaucer was the "first refinement" of English verse and English language: "he that reads the works of Gower will find smooth numbers and easy rhymes, of which Chaucer is supposed to have been the inventor, and the French words, whether good or bad, of which Chaucer is charged as the importer." Both Gower and Lydgate, Johnson says, "sufficiently evince" that Chaucer's diction "was in general like that of his contemporaries." [RFY1981; rev. MA].
- Date
- 1755
- Gower Subjects
- Language and Word Studies
Style, Rhetoric, and Versification
Confessio Amantis
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