Hinnant's book will be an indispensable guide for anyone interested in understanding what is most modern in Johnson's thought and writings.

In contrast to the views of many eighteenth-century critics from Addison to Lord Kames, Johnson maintains that mimesis necessarily implies the absence of what it purports to represent and thus can never achieve what Kames calls "ideal ...

At the same time her stance as a feminist led her not only to articulate issues in terms of gender but also to define her poetry in opposition to the dominant literary form of the age, satire."--BOOK JACKET.