| 翻訳と辞書 |
The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia
''The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia'', originally titled ''The Prince of Abissinia: A Tale'', though often abbreviated to ''Rasselas'', is an apologue about happiness by Samuel Johnson. The book's original working title was "The Choice of Life".〔, Thomas Keymer, edited version of intro to Oxford World's Classic edition of Rasselas pub June 2009, Times Literary Supplement 25 March 2009〕 He wrote the piece in only one week to help pay the costs of his mother's funeral, intending to complete it on 22 January 1759 (the eve of his mother's death).〔 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".〔
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 a "philosophical romance".〔Quote attributed to John Robert Moore in Edward Tomarken's ''Johnson, Rasselas, and the Critics'', pg. 20.〕 Ten years prior to writing ''Rasselas'' he published "The Vanity of Human Wishes" in which he describes the inevitable defeat of worldly ambition. Early readers considered ''Rasselas'' to be a work of philosophical and practical importance and critics often remark on the difficulty of classifying it as a novel.〔 Johnson was a staunch opponent of slavery, revered by abolitionists, and Rasselas became a name adopted by emancipated slaves.〔
==Overview==
While the story is thematically similar to ''Candide'' by Voltaire, also published early in 1759 – both concern young men travelling in the company of honoured 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 satirising 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". In contrast 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''.
抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』
■ウィキペディアで「The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia」の詳細全文を読む
スポンサード リンク
| 翻訳と辞書 : 翻訳のためのインターネットリソース |
Copyright(C) kotoba.ne.jp 1997-2016. All Rights Reserved.
|
|