This book is an attempt to reexamine Samuel Johnson's literary criticism in the context of current critical debates. Through juxtapositions of Johnson with such movements as poststructuralism, reader response criticism, and the New Historicism, I hope to create a justification for reexamining our assumptions about Johnson's critical writings. More importantly, I hope to demonstrate the importance that Johnson's work might possibly hold for anyone concerned with issues in present-day literary criticism. Thus I argue that Johnson's unique combination of moral and critical analysis cannot be disengaged from theoretical assumptions and that a focus upon practical judgments invariably carries with it a conviction that the critical values behind those judgments are irrelevant.