The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia

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Quarto, 197pp., Gilt lettered and decorated cover and spine. All edges gilt. Spine edges are wearing. Lightly rubbed cover. Slight cracking of the joints. The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia,often abbreviated to Rasselas, is a novella. 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 this book. While the story is thematically similar to Candide by Voltaire - both concern young men traveling in the company of honored teachers, encountering and examining human suffering in an attempt to determine the root of happiness,their root concerns are distinctly different. While Voltaire was very directly satirizing 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," Rasselas is an outgrowth of Johnson's struggle with depression. The question Rasselas confronts most directly is whether or not humanity is essentially capable of attaining happiness. Writing as a devout Christian as well, Johnson makes no blanket attacks on the viability of a religious response to this question (Voltaire does so), and while the story is in places light and humorous, it is not a piece of satire. The plot concerns Rasselas, son of the King of Abissinia ( modern day Ethiopia), who leaves his home in company with his sister, Nekayah, and a philosopher, Imlac, to seek adventure. His observation of other kinds of people eventually leads to the conclusion that there is no easy path to happiness, and he returns to Abyssinia along with his companions. N° de ref. del artículo 023278

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