Abyssinia's Samuel Johnson Ethiopian Thought in the Making of an English Author

As a very young man, one of the most celebrated English authors of the eighteenth century translated a tome about Ethiopia. This experience permanently marked Samuel Johnson, leaving traces of the African discourse he encountered in that text in his dramaIrene;several of his short stories; and his most famous fiction,Rasselas. In this book, Wendy Laura Belcher provides a much needed perspective in comparative literature and postcolonial studies on the power of the discourse of the other to infuse European texts. Belcher illuminates how the Western literary canon is globally produced by developing the powerful metaphor of spirit possession to posit some texts in the European canon asenergumens, texts that are spoken through. Her model ofdiscursive possessionoffers a new way of theorizing transcultural intertextuality, in particular how Europe's others have co-constituted European representations. Through close readings of primary and secondary sources in English, French, Portuguese, and Ge'ez, Belcher challenges conventional wisdom on Johnson's work, from the inspiration for the name Rasselas and the nature of Johnson's religious beliefs to what makesRasselasso strange.

Wendy Laura Belcher is Assistant Professor of African literature in the Department of Comparative Literature and the Center for African American Studies at Princeton University. She is the author of Writing Your Journal Article in Twelve Weeks and Honey from the Lion: An African Journey.