Dr Johnson - A Great Reader of French Literature
- drjohnsonshouse
- Feb 25
- 2 min read
Lunchtime Lectures - Dr Johnson's House Series
Wednesday 28 May
12.30pm - 1.30pm
£3.96 (booking required)
Book now for this instalment of our monthly lunchtime lectures, part of an annual programme of talks held at Dr Johnson's House, kindly sponsored by The Fleet Street Quarter BID.
As is well known, Dr Johnson was a fine classical scholar, but he was also highly interested in modern languages, particularly French and Italian, and in the literature produced in these languages.
This lecture deals with his relationship to the French language and with his admiration for, and indebtedness to, French writers of the seventeenth century, in particular the moralist La Bruyère and the satirist and critic Boileau. Both were profoundly religious authors; their literary, ethical, and religious attitudes were consonant with Johnson’s own.
However, this is not the case with two of the greatest French authors of his own times, Voltaire and Rousseau, and the lecture concludes by presenting what he has to say of them.
Your ticket includes the opportunity to look around Dr Johnson's House as well as a complimentary lunch from local business Dilieto on Fleet Street.
Michael Moriarty
Michael Moriarty is Emeritus Professor of French at the University of Cambridge and an Honorary Fellow of Peterhouse, Cambridge. He is a graduate of St John’s College, Cambridge, and was a Fellow of Gonville & Caius College, Cambridge, and then Professor of French Literature and Thought at Queen Mary, University of London.
From 2011 to 2023, he was Drapers Professor of French at the University of Cambridge and a Fellow of Peterhouse. He has published several books, mostly on early modern French literature and thought: the most recent is Pascal: Reasoning and Belief (Oxford University Press, 2020). He is a Fellow of the British Academy.
Lunch will be served at this event: please let us know 48 hours in advance, via an Eventbrite message, if you have any specific dietary requirements or have any allergies.
